Standard Chartered Bank plans to double its mortages book in 2010 from Rs 2,400 crore in 2009, by entering new markets like Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata. Shyamal Saxena, GM, retail banking products, Standard Chartered Bank, said the bank is expanding its distribution network by adding relationship managers. ?We are working with developers and are also looking at new products,? said Saxena.
While the bank?s average home loan ticket size is now Rs 50 lakh, it plans to bring this down to Rs 40 lakh. Standard Chartered, according to Saxena, charges customers a floating rate of 9-9.25%. ?Mortgages comprise 60-70% of our retail consumer business and this year we have been disbursing a little less than Rs 500 crore a month as against Rs 200 crore a month last year. We are looking at doubling our disbursals in the coming months,? said Saxena. The bank is planning to hire 500 relationship managers this year exclusively for the consumer banking segment and some have already come on board.
?We want to reach out to customers through these managers to sell mortgages,? added Saxena.
Standard Chartered Bank has a retail customer base of 2.5 million and retail portfolio of about 60-70% are secured loans.
While mortgages are top priroty for the bank, it also plans to grow the credit cards and personal loans businesses, but at a slower pace. Owing to the economic slowdown, the bank?s credit card base has stayed more or less flat at 1.1 million. ?We have not seen a growth in issuances, but they haven?t shrunk. We will be stepping up our card issuances in 2010 with a focus on the affluent, mass affluent and also the upper middle class going ahead,? said Saxena. Standard Chartered saw loan and other impairments go up 16% to $182 million in 2009 from $157 million in 2008. Saxena said the bank was being cautious about credit quality of customers and was using the services of CIBIL. At the same time, the bank is also being cautious with personal loans.
?We are not as aggressive as we were three years ago and while we continue to do personal loans, we are focusing only on customers who have an account with us. We?re not acquiring new customers,? he said, adding that unsecured lending would be stepped up as the environment improved, possibly by the end of the year.?
The bank?s average personal loan ticket size has been around Rs 3-5 lakh. Standard Chartered plans to hire a total of 2,500 employees during the year for its Indian operations, which currently employs 8,000 people.