Capstone to provide loans to urban poor

Chennai, Aug 22: Capstone Financial Services today became the latest entrant into the Financial services industry and the company was planning to target the urban poor and low income clientele in providing loans to them at attractive interest rates.

Capstone was a part of the gobal player Devolopment Innovations Group (DIG).

DIG India Representative Bryan Winston and its President and CEO Franck Daphnis told newspersons here today that the aim of the company was to provide loans at low interest rates to urban poor who could not access to commercial banks in India.

The company would focus on home improvement loans and with an interest rate of 1.7 per cent per month, mortgage loans (15 per cent interest per annum with declining rate) and Micro finance services focus on individual lenders, which would have an interest rate of 1.7 to 1.8 per cent per month.

The company got its major funding from Bill Gates foundation and had invested a couple of million dollars to start with, in India.

The loan portfolio was expected to grow to one billion dollars in the next five years, though the company had set a modest credit lending target of a few million dollars in the first year.

"Our aim is to provide interest rates as low as possible", they said and added that the main objective was to become an NBFC in the near future." Asked whether offering loans at low interest rates would trigger ''interest-rate war'' among other players in the market, Mr Daphnis said "we are for a healthy competition, though the interest rates are likely to come down soon''.

He said the company would expand to other parts of the country soon.

UNI