Rooftop solar programme to be gamechanger: SBI chairman at BS IML Conclave

The rooftop solar programme, announced by the finance minister in the interim Budget, can be a "gamechanger" and the State Bank of India (SBI) looks at it as an opportunity for its home loan business, the bank's chairman Dinesh Khara said on Wednesday.

In a fireside chat with Tamal Bandyopadhyay, consulting editor of Business Standard, at the third edition of the India Mortgage Leadership Conclave in Mumbai, Khara said, "We look at it as an opportunity. We have already introduced various products to promote the adoption of solar energy, and rooftop solar is one such program that we are already running."

Khara also said that in two states, Gujarat and Kerala, the adoption of rooftop solar programmes has already been high.

In her interim Budget speech, Nirmala Sitharaman announced that under the programme, the Centre would enable 10 million houses to get 300 units of free electricity every month. It is expected that this would save Rs 18,000 crore due to the programme.

Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Centre's plan to install rooftop solar in one crore households under the Pradhanmantri Surodaya Yojna.

On Wednesday, Khara said, "When I look at the contours of the scheme, I could observe that this is actually going to be a gamechanger because every household will become an electricity producer. They will consume a part of the electricity generated and the remaining they will pump into the grid."

He also said that there may be some announcement to provide incentives to the home buyers in the Budget, which will be announced after the general elections.

"I think much of it will depend upon how the government will look at it at the time of the final budget but, yes, of course, I certainly feel that there could be a scope for giving some incentives so that homeowners are also encouraged," he said.

He added that though House Rent Allowance is deductible in terms of tax interest on home loans can be revisited. "Over a period of time, maybe there could be a scope for revisiting this aspect," he said.

Khara also said that the bank has started leveraging technology and aims to make YONO "a digital bank within the bank".

"We have started leveraging the database we have. It was quite a static database for many years but now we have created many algorithms and we are running them on our database, which actually helps us in honing our risk management practices," he said.

"Apart from that, it also helps us in identifying potential customers whom we should reach out to to offer our products and services. It also helps us in offering the customer what he is looking for."

Khara also said that currently, with the help of analytics and the YONO platform, SBI is underwriting more than Rs 1 trillion worth of assets. "There is a growth of almost 30 per cent in a year in this loan book...In terms of quality also, this book is much better than the quality we have," he said.

Moreover, he said that now the bank is not confined to the salaried class for giving home loans.

"We are looking at some threshold level when it comes to credit scores. If the borrower has those credit scores, we are extending them the interest rate benefit also and we are very happy lending to some customers," he said.

Currently, SBI has a loan book of Rs 35 trillion and out of these, Rs 7 trillion are home loans.