With more and more women availing of formal credit, leveraging various loan products to meet their personal and professional aspirations, their outstanding borrowings reached `36.5 lakh crore as of December 2024, up 18% from `30.9 lakh crore in the trailing 12 months, when overall retail credit grew to `142.3 lakh crore, up 16.7% from `121.9 lakh crore.
Women are leading borrowers in gold loans (44% share of the total), education loans (36%) and home loans (32%) and business loans (25%) in 2024. Of the total outstanding retail credit books of banks and non-banks at `142.27 lakh crore, women borrowers own 26% or `30.6 lakh crore in 2024, up from 25% in the previous year, according to the data collated by the credit bureau Crif Highmark.
The share of women borrowers in overall retail loans remained stable at nearly 26% in December 2024, while the number of women borrowers rose to 8.3 crore from 7.5 crore during this period, a growth of 10.8%, according to the credit bureau. In contrast, the number of male borrowers increased to 20.3 crore from 19.1 crore, a growth of 6.5% during this period, the agency added.
In 2024, the share of new women borrowers remained high across many products compared to men. The originations value to female borrowers in the first nine months of FY25 has already surpassed the same period in FY24 for gold loans, property loans, consumer durable loans, and two-wheeler loans. Another key feature in the report is that it is public sector banks which were lending more to women in 2024.
Younger women (under-35) have the highest share, which though marginally declined in 2024 to 43.8% from 44.3% in 2022 and overall. Women from southern states have higher credit exposure compared to other parts, and they also have better borrowing performance across most credit products. From sectoral point of view, as much as 32% of all home loan borrowers are women with an outstanding of `38,91,684 crore in 2024, which is 100 bps lower than the 2023 share, while 25% of all business loans at `20,13,338 crore are held by women, and 18% of personal loans are also with them with an outstanding of `14,26,167 crore
While 19% of agri and tractor borrowers are women worth `11,77,858 crore, 24% of property loans worth `14,76,727 crore also with them. When it comes to good loans, as much as 43% or `11,24,077 crore are with them. In 2023 they held 44% of all gold loans and held `8,06,480 crore, which grew 44% in 2024, the report said.
Auto loan share stood at 17% at `8,33,571 crore and credit card share at 13% or `3,62,848 crore and education loan share stood at 36% or `2,13,086 crore, and grew 31% in 2024 over 2023. Consumer durable loans at 24% or `84,298 crore, taking their share in the total retail book of banks and non-banks to 26% or `1,42,26,692 crore, up 18% from `1,21,86,359 crore in 2023 when their share was 25%.