BENGALURU: India’s loan market has seen an aggressive 100% growth from FY17-FY21 at Rs 156.9 lakh crore, according to a report titled’ How India lends’ by CRIF High Mark, leading Indian credit bureau. The report stated that the small-ticket personal loans ( with size less than Rs 1 lakh) has led the growth in the loans portfolio which saw a 49% share from the retail and commercial borrowers.
Although the number of active retail loans has grown 2x , there has been a flat growth in the average balance of the borrowers, indicating uptick in small-ticket loans. Over the last five years, retail, micro lending and commercial lending portfolios have witnessed an increase by 91%, 157% and 93%, respectively.
When it came to retail borrowers, almost all product categories, including personal loans, home loans, auto loans, credit card originations, consumer durable loans saw an expansion in volume even if the average ticket-size of each type of borrowing was uneven. The retail loans portfolio as of March, 2021 stood at Rs 77.5 lakh crore, a 91% growth since March, 2017.
Small-ticket loans ( less than Rs 1 lakh) constituted 50% of the personal loans portfolio , dominated byNBFCs. Overall, personal loans witnessed 2.3x growth in value terms from FY17-FY20 and 3.8X growth in volume. Credit card issuance hit a 80% q-o-q drop in Q1 FY21, however, the number of new cards surpassed pre-Covid levels by Q4 FY21. Credit Cards have total balances of Rs 173,9000 cr and 608.89 lakh cards are in circulation as of Mar’21, with 11.6% Y-o-Y growth by value and 13.5% by volume, the report said.