Credit cards delinquencies in 2019 improve marginally

Delinquencies in the credit card segment have shown a marginal improvement in the year to December 2019, a credit information company said on Wednesday. The 90-180 days overdue balances on credit cards for the Indian system stood at 0.80 per cent in December 2019 as against 0.85 per cent in December 2018, Crif High Mark chief executive and managing director Navin Chandani told PTI.

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic growth had fallen to a decadal low of about 5 per cent, and concerns were being raised about its impact on retail loans and especially the unsecured products from a loan portfolio quality perspective.

Private banks have shown better performance than state-run ones when it comes to improvement in the portfolio quality, according to credit information data.

Also, when it comes to delinquencies, credit cards with higher spends of over Rs 50,000 are the ones which are reporting a larger proportion of the setbacks as against the smaller spends ones, the company said.

Meanwhile, it said that the portfolio growth zoomed up to 44 per cent in 2019 as against the 38 per cent growth in 2018 and the total outstanding stood at Rs 1.24 lakh crore as of December 2019.

However, the growth in the card base slowed down to 25 per cent in 2019 as against the 30 per cent in the year-ago period, it said, adding that the total number of outstanding?cards stood 50 million as of December 31, 2019.

Chandani said over the next few quarters, even as the industry battles the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the number of active cards will grow at 1 million per quarter.

When countered with the grim economic scenario on the ground, he said banks will still prefer taking a Rs 10,000 credit bet on a borrower so that once the tide turns, the same limits can be increased rather than scouting for new customers afresh.

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He said the millennial age group which is under-penetrated but has high appetite and smaller cities and towns will be the key drivers which will be driving the demand for credit cards in the time ahead.