Covid boosts top-up loans & balance transfers

Arvind Hali, MD & CEO, Motilal Oswal Home Finance reveals how the pandemic is affecting business and how the company is responding:

- Ravi Lalwani

Arvind Hali assets that MOHFL is focusing on firsttime homebuyers in LIG and EWS segments

Ravi Lalwani: What change in patterns of home demand and home loan demand are you seeing post 12 months of covid? How has your business responded to these changes?

Arvind Hali: We observed an uptick in housing demand post covid wave-1 however the same can be attributable to the lull period during 6 months of continuous lockdown. The actual demand resurfaced from Jan21 onwards when several initiatives were also undertaken like discount by builders, benign interest rates, cut in registration charges from state governments, and rise in awareness about home ownership. As a result, the housing industry did one of the best disbursements in H2FY21. However demand plummeted from April-21 due to covid wave 2.

Amid both the covid waves, lenders were also treading with caution, especially in the affordable segment where the customer base has lower immunity towards economic shock. MOHFL was not untouched by the above and witnessed strong traction in disbursements from Jan-21 to Mar-21. We believe demand for housing is likely to remain strong in the near term and HFCs are likely to benefit from this. We are alert and have started ramping up our sales force. We have spread our wings in the northern part of the country by opening branches in NCR and Haryana.