Banks suffer soft credit demand

To fuel demand before the Lunar New Year, banks raced to roll out diverse preferential credit packages for car purchases to attract customers. Banks, however, said capital absorption for such lending was modest compared to previous years.  

The Orient Commercial Bank (OCB) just launched the ‘Car within reach’ programme with 15 per cent, per year interest rates for short-term loans and 16.5 per cent rate to medium and long-term loans.

Joining the programme, customers get a chance to access flexible lending based on their collateral.

Loan amount would reach a total car value in a 60-month duration. In case the collateral is the car they manage to buy, lending amount will be 70 per cent of the car value in 60-month duration at most.

Besides, lending procedures are simple with approval within 24-hours.

OCB’s deputy director Truong Dinh Long said capital disbursement was slow. Car purchase lending is often buoyant at OCB, however, until present it only accounted for 10-15 per cent of individual customers’ total outstanding loans.

HDBank also came up with a concessionary lending programme. Accordingly, individual customers can enjoy a 8.6 per cent, per year lending rate in the first three months with lending amount up to 70 per cent of collateral value.

According to a bank executive, it was extremely hard to boost personal lending, particularly for car purchases, in the current context though customers’ demand for capital in this segment was always on the rise.

At OceanBank, individual customers holding position from head at departments at businesses belonging to VNR500 Club (converging Vietnam’s top 500 businesses) who want to buy cars will be assisted with simple lending procedures within eight hours at competitive lending rates with loan amounting to 95 per cent of the car value. Loan duration is at most five years (60 months).