Tuesday, March 31, 2009

SBI announced financing details for Nano, will charge 10% interest on loans

Finally Tata Nano was launched yesterday and keeping to his promise Mr Tata told that the company will offer Rs l lac price for the initial 1 lac customers only because the prices to the related products have increased therefore he will be revising the price of the car for the later customers.

Hence a majority of Tata Nano customers will have to pay more interest payments on the steep booking amount over the next one year. The reason being the Tata Motors will be able to deliver only 50,000-60,000 cars during 2009-10, though the company plans to accept 100,000 applications.

Therefore every customer who books the base version which will cost around Rs 112,000-123,000 from the State Bank of India (SBI), the preferred lenders will have to make an upfront payment of Rs 2,999 as interest charge according to the calculation made at the rate of 10 per cent, and processing fee. Moreover on any further delay in delivery the customer will have to pay additional interest payment at the same rate.

While for the later models the customers will have to pay around Rs 3,300 and Rs 3,900.

Customers who are not willing to avail finance from banks will only have to pay the application fee of Rs 300.

SBI, the sole booking agent for the Nano, has announced its financing details, while most other banks —public, private and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) — will be revealing their plans over the next few days. It is believed that most of the public sector banks will be keeping the lower interest rate on the advance booking amount than the existing car loan rates.

SBI while announcing its financial details said it will be finance the entire booking amount of the Nano for which for a period of three months the applicant will have to pay an interest rate of about 10 per cent upfront. For the introducing model, customers will have to make a down payment of Rs 95,000. Therefore advance booking amount for the Tata Nano CX will be Rs 120,000 and for the top-end model the booking amount will be Rs 143,000.

Individuals are free to either pay the entire booking amount by themselves or can get finance.

In case there is delay of beyond 90 days in the allotment, Tata Motors will have to pay an interest rate of 8.5 per cent for one year to two years and 8.75 per cent for a period of more than two years.

At the time of allotment of the car, the loan will be converted into a regular car loan in which the interest rate is 11.75 to 12 per cent in case of SBI, with a maximum repayment period of seven years. A senior bank official informant SBI will be taking in consideration the minimum income and other KYC (know-your-customer) requirements before sanctioning the loan.

The customers can obtain applications forms from at over 30,000 locations in about 1,000 cities through Tata Motors passenger’s car dealerships, SBI and its branches, its subsidiaries and associates, other preferred financiers and outlets of Westside, Croma, World of Titan and Tata Indicom exclusive stores.

Friday, March 6, 2009

SBI first CAB set up in Lucknow

India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday launched its first kind of Currency Administration Branch (CAB), which will exclusively handle currency notes.

CAB also known as cash factory, is part of the bank's proposal to open one currency chest in every city which will disburse notes and rupee coins to the local banks and ATMs, besides from identifying counterfeit currencies.

SBI (Lucknow circle) chief general manager Shiv Kumar explained, "The cash factory will be the nodal point for issuing currency notes to all local SBI branches as well as ATMs. About half a dozen sophisticated notes sorting machines will sort out currency notes in four varieties in the branch office".

Kumar explained the first range currency notes will be fed into ATMs. The second range, known as re-issuable notes, will be reserved for customer transactions, while the third one, non-issuable, will be sent back to the Reserve Bank of India.

He added the mutilated and bad notes identified by machines will come under the fourth range and will be scrutinized manually.

Kumar informed the next cash factory will be set up in Kanpur.

He added, "The new arrangements are aimed at a more efficient and cost-effective centralized currency administration system instead of having multiple currency chests in a centre as prevalent today".

For the SBI branches, supervising the chests along with routine functions is an additional work. Officials stated by setting up of the cash factory it would be great help in better management of currency notes with fewer infrastructures.

They said that the CAB will also help in boosting the fight against fake currency in Uttar Pradesh, which is becoming a hub for counterfeit currency notes being allegedly smuggled across the absorbent and largely unguarded border with Nepal.

Last year in August, a Reserve Bank of India team had discovered counterfeit currency amounting to over Rs.5 million (Rs.50 lakh) from the currency chest of the State Bank of India's Domariaganj branch in Siddharthnagar district.

Then, the bank's chief cashier was arrested and a large amount of both genuine and fake currency notes were recovered from his house.