LIC Housing Finance: Sees More Women Taking Home Loans..!

Traditionally, it has been the men folk who bought homes. But now women, who are increasingly joining the workforce, seem to be gaining the confidence to do so.

LIC Housing Finance Ltd (LIC HFL) is seeing such a trend with its exclusive housing loan scheme for women, ‘Bhagyalakshmi’.

In the January-March quarter, 2013 almost 40% of the home loans sanctioned by the LIC HFL were to women.

Mr. V. K. Sharma, MD and CEO, LIC HFL, said, '' Rs 7,842 crore housing loan sanctioned in the quarter, women borrowers, numbering 13,700, accounted for Rs, 3,154 crore. In the first half of the last financial year, we had conducted a study on women borrowers, who accounted for nearly 15% of our total customer base of 8 lakh.  found, to our surprise, that their credit quality is much better. So, we introduced an exclusive home loan scheme - Bhagyalakshmi - for them. The average loan size under the scheme, which was launched on January 8, 2013 works out to nearly Rs.23 lakh.

Borrowers under the Bhagyalakshmi scheme get 0.25% interest rebate for the entire tenure of the housing loan. The rate of interest is fixed for the first 2 years from the date of the first disbursement & is floating thereafter.

Mr. Sharma pointed out that the marketing pitch ‘Mera bhi chhota sa ghar ho sakta hai, jo na maika ho na sasural’ (I too can have a small house, which is neither my parent’s nor my in-laws’) of the scheme clicked with prospective borrowers. Bangalore, he said, is one of the major centres from where there is good demand for housing loans from women. There is also good demand from Mumbai & Pune.

Mr. V. K. Sharma,

“The borrower profile is changing…. As borrowers, women have better credit worthiness,” he also added.

 

The LIC HF chief Mr. Sharma said whenever his firm is recruiting, the human resources department (HR) is reminded that everything being equal, women will be preferred as employees.

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