Women form a substantial portion of home loan applicants and should be more facilitated.

The indian housing finance industry needs to gear itself up for an emerging customer segment – single working women who wish to avail a home loan towards purchase or construction of own home. Today, there are incrementally more women graduating in universities in India. By 2020, 870 million more women will be employed in mainstream economy working across the sectors in private in corporate India.

While the Indian mortgage industry has been advocating for financial inclusion of lower and middle income families, and rightly so, there are several sub segments within the overall market – like single working women who dream of owning a home but are currently underserved due various reasons.

Some of these are:

·        Fear of inability to serve the EMI after marriage.

·        No suitable co-applicant.

·        Insistence on having a guarantor.

These are further accentuated in case of separated/divorced/widowed women who find it extremely challenging to avail finance towards purchase of home.


Flawed mindset

It has been a general mindset which, at most of the times is not backed by any solid data, that as home purchase requires a substantial amount of money, it may not be possible for a single women to serve the repayment throughout the loan tenure. Hence, there is an insistence of a co-applicant and a guarantor in the home loan application made by single women. There are no regulatory norms / guidelines that preclude any financial institution from providing mortgage finance to single working women or beset any condition for processing the application. These, like any other application are required to be processed purely on the basis of credit eligibility, but are not done.


Primary applicants

The percentage of women as primary applicants, currently though small in the loan books of financial institutions, is now increasing. Also, almost one out of the two home loan applications have co-applicant as women and their income is clubbed while appraisal to enhance the loan eligibility. If loan originators catered to their needs, working women class is set to be a huge customer segment offering significant business proposition.


Facilities provided


The industry has started to give attention to this emerging class of home loan borrowers. Most of the financial institutions encourage the participation of working women, by offering lower rates to women home loan borrowers and as such, even women borrowers need to come forward and avail such benefits. A series of small but significant steps need to be taken to bring the change, which would enable the deserving women applicants to get the financial access towards realization of their dream home on their own with as much ease as their male counterparts.