ICICI ups rates on new loans by 50 bps

ICICI Bank, the country's second-largest lender, today hiked lending rates for fresh loans to individuals by 50 basis points, following a 50 basis point increase in cash reserve ratio (CRR) by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The bank has not announced any increase in interest rates on loans to corporates.

The bank will also offer 50-100 basis points higher interest on deposits of certain maturities in the 1-3 years period.

"We have raised rates by 50 basis points across the board for new customers. The rate hike will not apply to existing customers," said V Vaidyanathan, executive director, ICICI Bank.

ICICI Bank has kept its floating reference rate for consumers unchanged at 14.75 per cent, which spares the existing borrowers, particularly for purchase of homes, from a further hike. This is the bank's third hike in lending rates since December.

The bank has since December 2006 raised its prime lending rate for corporates and floating reference rate for consumer loans by 150 basis points in two phases to 14.75 per cent and 11.75 per cent, respectively. One basis point is one-hundredth of one per cent.

ICICI Bank's new home loan borrowers will now have to pay 11 per cent for a floating rate loan against 10.5 per cent earlier and 13 per cent for a fixed rate loan against 12.5 per cent.

About 40 per cent of ICICI Bank's Rs 1,72,763 crore of advances are linked to the benchmark rates. The rest of the bank's loan portfolio carries a fixed interest rate but is largely short-term.

The bank will offer the highest rate of 9.50 per cent on a 590-day deposit and 890-day deposits, matching State Bank of India's peak rate of 9.5 per cent for deposits with maturity of four years to less than five years.

For the 390-day deposit ICICI Bank will offer 9 per cent, in line with rates offered by other private banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank and Yes Bank.