Factors which influence loan interest
Shyam and his father Narendran were
having a discussion on how they missed out on a golden opportunity to purchase
a wonderful bungalow in Mogappair, Chennai. Six years back they rejected the
location, thinking it was too out of the city to invest money and thought by
the time it develops, they will not have use for it as Shyam was planning to
become a green card holder eventually since he was comfortably settled into his
software job in Philadelphia. Home loan interest rates were extremely
affordable then.
Prime lending Rate - This is the benchmark interest rate on the basis of which
financial institutions decide the interest rates on the various loan
products. For example, a bank might say a loan interest rate will always
be 0.5% above the PLR. So this means if the PLR increases or decreases by a
certain amount, the interest rates charged on the floating rate loans offered
by the bank also increases or decreases by the same amount.
Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) - It is the percentage of cash deposits that banks
need to keep with the RBI on an everyday basis. Increasing the CRR also means
Banks have lesser money to lend. The RBI adjusts the CRR to change the amount
of liquidity in the financial system, which helps to keep the inflation
within reasonable limits. Also, when CRR is increased, the interest rates
also increase as the amount of liquidity in the financial system decreases. In
recent times RBI has made frequent CRR cuts in the past few months to control
inflation and inject liquidity in the financial system. This is expected to
impact the interest rates bunched with other favourable aspects for home loan
applicants.
Repo Rate - This is the interest rate at which RBI lends money to the
banks whenever they need to borrow funds from the RBI. When the repo rate
decreases its good news for the banks as they can avail more funds at a lower
interest rate and vice versa.
Reverse Repo Rate - This means just the opposite! Here the RBI borrows funds
from the banks and when the Reverse Repo Rate increases Banks are very happy to
lend money to RBI because of the attractive interest rates RBI offers to obtain
the loans for.
(Statutory Liquidity Ratio) SLR Rate - Every commercial bank needs to maintain a certain amount
of funds in the some form, which includes cash, gold, government bonds etc.
before they can provide credit to its customers. This measure helps RBI have a
control over the bank’s credit expansion keeping it realistic.
The collective impact of all these
rates influence the liquidity in the financial system and lead to an increase
or decrease in PLR, which in turn affects loan lending rates.
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