SBI starts retail loan war, cuts home, auto loan by 0.5%

August 2, 2012 by sknlakshmi

A day after the credit policy, big daddy State Bank has started a rate war. It has slashed lending rates on home and auto loans between 50 to 60 basis points to make them the lowest in the industry.

SBI has reduced interest rate on home loans of up to Rs 30 lakh to 10.25% from existing 10.50% (after 0.25% concession over the card rate), a senior bank official said.

On the home loans of beyond Rs 30 lakh but less than Rs 75 lakh, the new rate will be 10.40% against the existing 10.75%, down 0.35%. The new rates will be effective from August 7, the official added.

The base rate or minimum lending rate of SBI stands at 10%. Base rate is the benchmark rate below which a bank cannot lend. With regard to the car loan, the reduction is to the extent of 0.5%
The new car loan would be 10.75% against the existing rate of 11.25% for a seven-year loan. Now for every Rs 1 lakh, a customer has to pay Rs 1,699 EMI against Rs 1,725 per month earlier. SBI claimed this as the lowest EMI. With the reduction, a borrower would end up saving Rs 312 per year on every one lakh.

Yesterday, RBI in its quarterly monetary policy review reduced Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR), the amount of deposits that have to be invested in government bonds and other liquid assets, by 1%.

RBI Governor D Subbarao cut the SLR to 23%, thereby releasing around Rs 68,000 crore of additional liquidity into the system, even as he left all the key interest rates unchanged in the anti-inflationary stance.