Moves follows similar rate cuts undertaken by State Bank of India and ICICI Bank for women property borrowers
India's largest home financier HDFC has brought down its home loans rates by 5 basis points to 9.85% for women loan borrowers matching it to the rates offered by State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank.
A loan product called 'Women Power' will be applicable to women, who is a sole or joint owner of the property and first applicant. It is also applicable to the non-resident women.
Renu Sud Karnad, managing director, HDFC Ltd, said, "With this product, we are empowering women with confidence of buying her own house. We are delighted to introduce this new initiative to promote home ownership amongst women." To avail the product, women should be financially capable to buy their dream home.
SBI was the first to reduce its base rate to 9.85% on April 7 soon after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) unveiled its first credit policy of the new fiscal. Subsequently, HDFC was the first to reduce the home loan rate across the borrower category to 9.90%, on April 10.
A couple of days later, SBI cut its home loan rates by 10 basis point to 9.90% on April 13, to bring their rate on par with that of HDFC. In effect, the bank reduced rates for both women and general customers by 25 basis points.
One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage.
At present, ICICI Bank has the lowest base rate at 9.75%. Their home loan rates are on par with SBI and HDFC at 9.85% for women and 9.90% for general customers.
All the big home loan financiers HDFC, SBI and ICICI Bank have similar rates of interest.
Third largest lender Axis Bank has also cut its rates on its floating home loans by 20 basis points to 9.95% with effect from April 13. The interest rate for fixed rate home loans have also been reduced. Customers taking a fixed rate home loans with a tenure of 10 years for loan amount of up to Rs 30 lakh will have to pay 9.90% same as the floating rate home loans.
Banks have been reducing their base rate after the central bank governor Raghuram Rajan nudged them to reduce their lending rates after RBI cut its repo rate or the rate at which it lend overnight money to commercial banks by 0.50% in this calendar year -- 25 basis points in January and another similar cut in March.
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