When it comes to loans, it sometimes feels like banks are playing the Godfather. There are some that easily become a part of the family, while others get rejected.
Here are top 3 customer profiles that banks prefer, or don’t prefer.
The Hit List
Doctors:
A privileged lot, to say the least! Banks believe that the doctors are disciplined professionals and would not falter. They are seen as good real estate buyers, car buyers and big-ticket-loan-takers; home loans for tax benefits and car loans for their premium cars.
Most banks offer special rates for doctors. For example, while personal loans for others start at 16%, banks offer loans at 13.75% onwards for doctors. Banks also have special schemes on various loans for them. Many of these professionals are HNIs of their bank. Banks love to cross-sell other products to them, like a premium credit card, because of their high credit scores. And, of course, they get referrals too.
IT Professionals:
The IT professionals have virtually rewritten the rules of loan disbursal. Their changing lifestyle and spending patterns have made them good loan takers; whether they are home loans, car loans, personal loans or even credit card loans.
They too avail multiple home loans for tax saving purposes.
And having settled down in metros, their loan size is high. As they want to get things done easily, most of their real estate buys are from the bank approved projects. This way, banks are free of the legal verification and get things done easily as well.
Once the loan is quickly disbursed, the colleagues are referred and the banks have a chain of customers. Most of them might even have their salary accounts in the same bank, and the bank is more than happy to give them special rates.
Government employees:
A banker’s banker! If you are a government employee, your loan application would be processed in a jiffy, as it is a ‘safe and secure’ profile for the banks. The credit manager is free from checking company credentials, worrying about job loss, changing jobs and recession. Government servants are quite disciplined about repaying loans too.
Their loan tickets may not be as attractive as the other two categories, but government employees are all-time favourites of the banks. Most of these employees rely a lot on the banks; be it the purchase of a new house, car, or availing education loans for their children, personal loans, top-up loans and more.
The Miss List
Businessmen:
Banks are always wary of bizmen. Especially if you are a young entrepreneur with a startup, the reception could be cold. If you are a ‘serial’ entrepreneur, they have doubts about your stability. And in case you’re an entrepreneur in the virtual world, it’s a big ‘no’ from the banks. The reason? Banks don’t see stability in cloud data and yet another e-commerce venture.
But if you have a well-known enterprise or a family-owned business, they are happy to give a lending hand. But, there would be no compromise on interest rates. For home loans, some banks charges 1-2% more for businessmen, and the rates are around 22% for personal loans. And of course, the paperwork would be humongous.
Advocates:
Advocates are known to be a sharp lot and everybody knows that it’s hard to argue with a lawyer. It seems like a daunting prospect to end up on the other side of the table, when and if anything goes wrong.
They work from client to client and they generally may not be associated with any firm. Banks could have blacklisted advocates, we couldn’t be sure.
Film professionals:
We all know that the film world is just as fickle as it is glamorous. There are those who get their 15 minutes of fame and disappear for good.
We don’t mean just actors here, but all those who belong to the filmdom- whether you are an ad man, a model, a photographer, a sound engineer, a theatre artist, a musician or any play any other part.
Movies come and movies go. There are so many movies that we’ve never heard of before (except while playing dumb-charades) and there are just as many actors/models that we never saw again. Not everyone is able to make it big. What if the vanishing act happens for real, you know?
We weren’t referring to actual shooting with the Hit and Miss lists. As far as we know, the banks and the Mafia don’t have that much in common. But nobody wants to be in the bad books of either, do you agree?