SBI to soon disburse loans in 10 days

To improve customer experience, India's largest bank State Bank of India (SBI) is planning to shorten the home loan disbursal period from the current 17 days' time-frame to 10 days, a senior official said here on Friday.

"We are shortening the loan disbursal period to 10 days within the coming six months. Presently, it is 17 days and last year it was 31 days," the bank's chief general manager, Prashant Kumar, told mediapersons on the sidelines of a housing expo organised by the Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Associations of India (CREDAI).

The bank, to achieve this time-frame, has streamlined its processes by bringing in the processing and sales and marketing departments under a single roof and implementing customer-friendly policies and initiatives.

"We are also pre-approving (housing) projects which will reduce the time for verifying the legalities involved in a loan for the project," he said.

Prashant Kumar said SBI is also considering financing housing projects.

SBI has disbursed Rs.50,000 crore as housing loans for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015 of which Rs.2,100 crore was disbursed in Bengal.

Prashant Kumar said the bank is looking for a pan-India growth of 10-15 percent for loan disbursals this year.

Last year, the housing loan rejection rate for the bank was less than one percent.

Prashant Kumar said the ticket size for housing loans is Rs.20 lakh.