SBI home loans to get cheaper as lender slashes MCLR
India's largest lender, the State Bank of India (SBI) on Friday cut its lending rates. The bank reduced its MCLR (Marginal Cost of funding-based Lending Rate) by five basis points, effectively making home loans cheaper. The development comes just a day after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced incentives for banks to boost credit towards auto, retail housing, etc. Here are more details.
SBI lowers MCLR to 7.85%, effective from February 10
The SBI on Friday lowered its one-year MCLR to 7.85%, which will make auto and home loans cheaper. The new MCLR is effective from February 10. This is notably the ninth time that the SBI has cut lending rates in the current fiscal year. Currently, the MCLR is 7.90% after it was reduced by five basis points from 8% in December.
SBI also reduced its FD rates by up to 0.5%
Separately, the bank also lowered its fixed deposit (FD) rates, citing "surplus liquidity in the system." While retail FD rates were lowered by 10-50 basis points, bulk FD rates were cut 25-50 basis points. The bank has slashed FD rates across all tenors except for deposits with a maturity period of 7-45 days. The new FD rates are also effective from February 10.
Here are SBI's new FD rates
For FDs maturing in 46-179 days, the bank reduced rates by 0.5%. The new rate is 5%. For deposits maturing in 180 days to one year, the bank reduced rates to 5.5% from 5.8%. For a period of 1 year to 10 years, the bank reduced FD rates to 6% from 6.10%. For more details on FD rates, you may visit SBI's official website.
RBI incentivized lending to MSMEs, auto, housing
On Thursday, the RBI had kept repo rates—the rate at which it lends short-term funds to commercial banks—steady at 5.15%. The central bank also incentivized lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and the ailing auto and housing sectors by tweaking cash reserve ratio (CRR) norms. Banks were also given exemption in CRR over incremental lending till July 2020.
