ICICI Bank sells 45% bad home loans to Arcil

First step in creating market for sticky retail lending.

ICICI Bank, the country's second largest bank, has sold roughly 45 per cent of its sticky home loans to the Asset Reconstruction Company India Ltd (Arcil) in a first step towards creating a market for retail loans that have turned bad.

ICICI Bank sold Rs 360 crore of non-performing home loans at a price around the book cost, confirmed Rajiv Sabharwal, senior general manager, ICICI Bank.

The home loans sold are a mix of loans ranging from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. The lender here gets a value net of the provisions on the book.

Arcil, which is estimated to have bought about Rs 40,000 crore of bad corporate loans so far, is in the process of creating infrastructure for dealing in non-performing retail loans.

This is the first time Arcil has bought a chunk of bad retail loans, but Arcil officials could not be reached for comment.

Corporate loans are normally sold by banks at a discount ranging up to 70 to 75 per cent. In the case of home loans, the discount would be in the range of 25 to 30 per cent, a banking analyst with a foreign brokerage said.

ICICI Bank had also done an independent valuation of the non-performing home loans sold through Crisil, the Indian subsidiary of global ratings agency Standard & Poor's.

ICICI Bank's non-performing home loan portfolio is slightly above 1 per cent of the total home loan portfolio. The bank's home loans portfolio is about 50 per cent of its total retail loans of Rs 1,31,014 crore.