ICICI Bank crosses Rs 1.5 trn in home loans, aims for Rs 2 trn by FY20

ICICI Bank on Wednesday said its mortgage loan portfolio crossed Rs 1.5 trillion, a first among private sector banks in the country. It is now aiming to grow its home loan book to Rs 2 trillion by 2019-20.

In line with the bank’s renewed focus on the retail segment, it has become the largest mortgage lender among private sector banks.

“We plan to grow at 15 per cent and bring the mortgage book to Rs 2 trillion by the end of FY20,” said Anup Bagchi, executive director, ICICI Bank.

The mortgage portfolio forms 52 per cent of the bank’s retail loan book of approximately Rs 3 trillion, he added.

To achieve its Rs 2-trillion target, ICICI Bank is expanding its network to new locations in tier-II and III cities as well as micro-markets on the periphery of major cities.

“We already have branches in those locations, so we are creating branches within branches,” said Bagchi.

The bank currently has 1,050 processing centres and plans to add 560 centres to its network.

Bagchi added that the strongest growth in mortgage loans was coming from tier-II, tier-III and tier-IV cities. The average ticket size stands at over Rs 3 million.

The bank said it has seen big traction from its customers for the ‘housing for all’ scheme. “In terms of affordable home loans, the number of loans given is higher. However, it is slow to contribute to the book,” said Bagchi. The bank claimed that delinquencies were “not a problem”.

ICICI Bank plans to leverage technology to offer home loans and expects digitisation of processes to result in lower operating expenses and lead to significant savings, which would be passed on to customers.

The bank has approved 2,000 new housing projects, completely online and has also enabled an online repository of 30,000 approved projects across 40 cities in the country for its customers.

ICICI Bank is reeling under allegations of conflict of interest against managing director and CEO Chanda Kochhar.

ICICI Bank