Small-towners, millennials & women take the lead in shopping for financial products online

Millennials, women and small-towners logged on to shop for financial products for the first time, driving robust growth in loans and credit cards in 2018, revealed a report from online marketplace for financial products BankBazaar.com.

There was bigger appetite for unsecured personal loans among small-towners with their average loan ticket size standing at ₹2.8 lakh compared to ₹2.55 lakh of metro residents. Women were seen taking charge of their finances and borrowing more as far as secured personal loans (home loans) were concerned: the average ticket size with women as primary applicants came in at ₹27.5 lakh as against ₹22.9 lakh in cases wherein men were the primary applicants.

Women outperformed men in fulfilling their globe-trotting aspirations with a 73 per cent rise in travel credit card applications compared to 71.5 per cent from men. And millennials under 25 led the consumption of credit cards. The report titled ‘MoneyMood 2019 – How India is going to bank’ analysed the transactions of 169 million unique visitors to BankBazaar in 2018.

“Credit cards will continue to be the most popular product in 2019 as consumers will choose to spend their money smartly as awareness of the rewards/benefits of using them increases. Short-term loans of 3/6/9 month tenures will fuel the next wave of borrowing as more first-time salaried borrowers in metros go online to fulfil their borrowing needs and more first-time internet users in non-metros log on to buy financial products,” Adhil Shetty, co-founder and CEO, BankBazaar told BusinessLine.

Like in BankBazaar, nearly 50 per cent of customers on investment advisory and mutual fund platform Upwardly.in are from outside of the top 30 cities. “The pent-up demand in regions across the country is high as it has not been addressed adequately till recently; 47 per cent of our customers investing in mutual funds are from non-metros. Since customers feel comfortable talking in vernacular languages, our relationship managers talk in the same language. Historically, women have saved more, and we see that reflecting in our own platform: women invested 19 per cent more than men,” said Prateek Mehtra, founder CEO, Upwardly, which attracted four million unique visitors in 2018.

Mobile first savings platform Wizely, built for millennials, encourages daily savings habit for 20–65 days to help them reach short-term, aspirational goals which are otherwise difficult to attain.

“We already have 2,85,000 signed-up users in the age profile of 18-29, since our alpha launch in April 2018. Over ₹24 crore has already been saved on Wizely, of which ₹19 crore has been spent on electronics/smartphones, travel, fashion, jewellery and home furnishings through the 90 brand partners on our platform,” said co-founder of Wizely, Vijay Bobba.

The government’s strong push for rapid digitisation seems to have ushered in a change in buying behaviour, as people are preferring to go paperless to buy personal finance products online.