HomeMedia CenterWomen from small towns queue up for P2P loans

Women from small towns queue up for P2P loans

23-year-old Riteshwari from Ghaziabad wanted to start a beauty salon. She hit a roadblock when she tried to raise funds from her bank. Even though she had a savings bank account with the bank and her income tax returns in place, the bank asked her to open a current account. The cumbersome process made her lose all hope of getting funded. Then she came across a P2P lending platform on the internet.

“I was just surfing through the net for easy loans and saw an ad regarding P2P loans. I got Rs 1 lakh-loan for 12 months within a few days and even got my last EMI waived off. Finally, I could get a loan to modify my salon without heavy paperwork like banks. That too, at a low processing fee,” reminisces Riteshwari.

There are many similar stories of women from smaller towns opting for P2P platforms to secure easy loans.

“Banks deny loans if the applicant is from a small town. They think we won’t repay on time,” says Jyoti Sharma from Bulandshahr, a small city in Uttar Pradesh, part of Delhi NCR.

Jyoti was denied a bank loan due to low CIBIL score of 500. She got Rs 2 lakh-loan for 36 months from one of the P2P platforms, though the rate of interest was on the higher side.

Are women better borrowers?
“In terms of borrower profiling, we have observed that women borrowers make more timely repayments as compared to their male counterparts. As per last year’s data, loans to single working women as a category have delivered net returns upwards of 20 per cent pa,” says Rajat Gandhi, CEO, Faircent.com.

Based on the historical data available with the platform, Faircent.com launched a special loan product ‘Aspiring Women’ aimed at female borrowers. This allowed lenders to offer loans exclusively to women borrowers.

“Research suggests that women borrowers are financially more disciplined. They make a lucrative asset class for lenders to invest in. Currently, 10-20 per cent of borrowers funded on our platform are women,” says Gandhi.

Some P2P players even believe that default rate for women borrowers is lower by around 50 per cent.

“While male default percentage stands at 3.5 per cent, it’s around 1.85 per cent among females. Even in those cases, it was the husband who had defaulted,” says Raghavendra Pratap Singh, Co-Founder, i2ifunding.

In some cases, women apply for a loan because her husband may have had a bad CIBIL score.

“There are genuine women borrowers who are actually entrepreneurs. But after few cases of default, we now consider father or husband’s credit score before giving the loan,” Singh adds.

Female P2P borrowers likely to grow
In a recent interview with ET.com, RupeeCircle’s Founder & CEO, Ajit Kumar had said that 33 per cent of the investors on its platform are women. This number is likely to go up across P2P lending.

“The number of female borrowers is likely to grow to 30-35 per cent in next 3 years from the current 20 per cent on our platform,” says Singh of i2ifunding.

Non-metro cities have emerged as the biggest market for unsecured personal loans. Average personal loan ticket size here has increased from Rs 55,000 to Rs 75,000 with an average tenure of 16 months, says LenDenClub.

“There has been a significant rise in the number of women applicants for unsecured credit in the past 6 months. At LenDenClub, we get women applicants ranging from 21 to 45 years. These women applicants work in small and medium enterprises to multi-national companies,” says Bhavin Patel, Founder and CEO, LenDenClub.

Women are investing too
P2P players are also expecting an increase in women investors on the platform. “In the next 3 years, the number of female investors may go up to 50 per cent with genuine investors increasing to 15-20 per cent from 5 per cent in 2019,” predicts Singh of i2ifunding.

“At Finzy, around 15% of our borrowers are women and around 25% of lenders are women,” says Amit More, Founder and CEO, Finzy.

“Once convinced with an opportunity, women tend to be more and disciplined in their investments. Average investment of women tends to be 30 per cent more than their male counterparts,” adds More.

LenDenClub is India’s largest alternate investment platform which started operations in India in 2015. We have been helping investors diversify their investments beyond traditional investment instruments ever since.

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Investment

The Reserve Bank of India does not accept any responsibility for the correctness of any of the statements or representations made or opinions expressed by Innofin Solutions Private Limited, and does not provide any assurance for repayment of the loans lent through its platform.

LenDenClub is an Intermediary under the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 and virtually connects lenders and borrowers through its electronic platform via the website and/or mobile app.

The lending transaction is purely between lenders and borrowers at their own discretion, and LenDenClub does not assure loan fulfilment and/or investment returns. Also, the information provided on the platform is verified or checked on the best efforts basis without guaranteeing any accuracy of the data/information verification. Any investment decision taken by a lender on the basis of this information is at the discretion of the lender, and LenDenClub does not guarantee that the loan amount will be recovered from the borrower, fully or partially. The risk is entirely on the lender. LenDenClub will not be responsible for the full or partial loss of the principal and/or interest of lenders’ investment amounts.

*This is an annualized yield and is subject to the maximum FMPP tenure, which is 5 years. P2P investment is subject to high risk and may cause an entire loss of principal.
 

*P2P investment is subject to risks. And investment decisions taken by a lender on the basis of this information are at the discretion of the lender, and LenDenClub does not guarantee that the loan amount will be recovered from the borrower.

** Average value mentioned is the weighted average of returns received by investors

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