State Bank of India (SBI) is adopting an aggressive approach in the retail and MSME gold businesses, targeting 3x growth in this portfolio to Rs 20,000 crore by March. It will leverage YONO, the digital banking platform, to cut down on response time and scale up activity. Cheap deposit money, which helps offer low lending rates, gives banks the edge over gold loan companies.
Yet, they have lost out because of a longer turnaround time — time taken to sanction loans — while the likes of Muthoot and Manappuram act quickly, being close to customers.
C S Setty, managing director (retail and