Bankers, late with providing new credits

Loans with instalments that exceed one third of the income or real estate financing with no down payments required, this is what half of the customers walking into a banking branch these days are asking questions about.
Nevertheless, banks are late in including such products in their offerings, though the new NBR rules were adopted as early as a month ago.
A large part of these customers would rather wait for the new products, say bankers. Though several banks sent the norms to the NBR for approval as early as the beginning of March, the monetary authority has not authorised them, yet. The NBR has imposed itself a deadline of 30 working days to issue an authorisation for the norms commercial banks sent it for approval.
Nevertheless, one cannot speak of a generalised postponement of borrowing. According to the Credit Bureau, the number of daily queries (giving a close approximation of the number of loan applications partner-banks are analysing) climbed in April to an all-time high of over 29,000, also amid the close Eastern holidays. Previously, there had been a number of days in March when more than 27,000 queries had been recorded.
Bankers also say March was a “very good” month in terms of lending.
The number of customers asking about new products is high in the case of large banks, too. Bankers say customers are mainly interested in the possibility of borrowing money above the current ceiling of 40%, a possibility that would probably depend on banks’ own offerings.
It is customers with considerable incomes that will particularly benefit from these modifications. Be it real estate loans with no down payment required or a higher share of instalments in the net monthly income, bankers are particularly targeting this category of customers, where they see a high potential that cannot be exploited, though, under the current norms.
However, banks have not rushed to send new lending norms to the NBR for approval. Only ten financial institutions went to the central bank with new norms and products developed on these norms.
However, approval is not guaranteed and the central bank may ask a bank to complete or modify the sent norms or ask for further information on retail lending policy. Banks have the obligation to include the stipulations of Regulation 3/2007 the NBR published in the Official Gazette in mid-March, as well as “the best practices in the domain” in their new norms
As a reaction to concerns voiced by some bankers on the dangers of some competition problems being generated by the norm validation procedure, the NBR guarantees it will treat all lending institutions on an equal basis. Though the new norms have not emerged yet, bankers are seeking new methods to offer bigger loans, heeding, however, the ceilings related to customer indebtedness set by the NBR’s old rules.