State Bank of India intends to turn up the heat on its competitors in the retail loans segment.

India’s largest bank plans to put in place an Internet-based customer acquisition solution that will allow prospective customers to not only apply for home loans but also generate in-principle loan sanction letter online.

The move to have an online customer acquisition solution could save the net-savvy GenNext customers the bother of repeat visits to the bank’s branch for completing the formalities associated with getting a home loan.

Instead, the bank’s sales executives will follow-up on the loan proposal with the customer, collect necessary documentary proofs and forward the application to Retail Assets Processing Centres for processing.

SBI’s gambit to provide the ‘do-it-yourself’ convenience for prospective home loan customers comes at a time when it is seeing a spurt in home loan applications on the back of competitive interest rates.

The bank is charging 10 per cent and 10.15 per cent interest on home loans up to Rs 30 lakh and above Rs 30 lakh, respectively. Besides, it has halved the processing charges and waived pre-payment penalty. The Web-based customer acquisition platform will provide the customer the option to request “expert callback” should he/ she get stuck at any stage.

Validation process

Once an online loan proposal is submitted by the customer with details such as the loan amount, income and KYC (Know-Your-Customer), it will go through a four-stage validation process.

The components of validation will be — online PAN verification; online enquiry with Credit Information Bureau; online evaluation of loan eligibility; evaluation of the customer based on internal risk scoring model and loan policy, said a senior official.

Post the validation stage, the customer will be e-mailed a digitally signed copy of the in-principle loan sanction letter.

All regional branch offices of the bank, which deal with home loans, will be mapped to the customer acquisition solution and the customer will be given the option of selecting the nearest branch from where he wants to take the home loan.

Login code

Customers will be given a unique login code to access the status of their application at each stage of the sourcing and loan processing period. The bank will have a dash board for monitoring follow up of proposals.

The customer acquisition solution will have the provision of ‘property search’ so that customers can search the properties based on various categories such as area, price, builder, and geographical location.

If the online customer acquisition solution clicks with home loans, the same will be extended to cover other retail banking products, said the official.

As at September-end 2012, SBI saw about 13 per cent year-on-year growth in home loans to Rs 1,08,381 crore against Rs 95,947 crore as at September-end 2011. The bank has about 26 per cent market share in the home loans segment.

>ramkumar.k@thehindu.co.in

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