Banks deprive loans to genuine people

Chennai, May 20: Several family-oriented and genuine members of Police, Journalists and Lawyers here are finding themselves in the unenviable position of being rejected for home loans and personal loans especially by the private banks.

The list of people included in the negative profile of private banks is very long.

Apart from cops, journalists and lawyers, private banks were reluctant to give loans to politicians and also to those, who were attached to the film industry.

A senior official working in a leading private sector bank ICICI told sources that the bank management sees these groups as 'possible defaulters' from whom they will not be able to extract money by using their regular 'money collecting tactics'.

"These are not the only group that has a negative profile when it comes to sanctioning loans", he said adding "employees from any sector, who receive their salary by cash are also listed in the non-eligible category by us".

According to the bank official, most of the private banks give priority to those who are working in government departments and IT field.

Another representative working for Deutsche Bank said "even though we take up this issue to our higher authorities in each and every meeting, it was vehemently denied". "Recently, two journalists from a national daily were denied personal loans from our banks", he pointed out adding "apart from this, in the case of police personnel, from constable to officer rank we stopped giving loans".

The bank official, however, added that, if somebody works in administration section in any newspaper or in the police department, the bank will not reject their loan applications.

"Our bank already put them in negative profiles", he said.

There are about 15 leading private sector banking operating in the state, which includes, ICICI, HDFC, The Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered bank, ABN Amro, HSBC and Kotak Mahendra.

"How can they classify all cops, journalists and lawyers as possible defaulters from whom they cannot get the loans repaid? Not all of us will fall under 'bad debt' category", a police officer attached to the CB-CID office said.

"A majority of us want to live in peace rather than getting abused by goons from banks", the police official added.

"It is grossly unfair on the banks to deny us the loan facility, the police official said". Interestingly, majority of nationalised banks here does not have any 'possible defaulter group' list while issuing loans to its customers. "We do not face any problem in sanctioning loans to police personnel or to a journalist", a senior manager working in a leading nationalised bank said.

There are defaulters in all the professions, whether it is a government department or a private sector, he added.

Interestingly, an ATM belonging to a private bank was set up inside the DGP office.

"About 1,500 of us maintain bank accounts at this private bank.

They want our accounts, but are not ready to give us loans" lamented a police officer, who is attached to the DGP office.

UNI