PNB Housing & Finance

By Priya Chetty on June 29, 2022
Image by Jcomp from Freepic.com

PNB Housing & Finance is one of the biggest non-banking financial companies (NBFC) in India’s home loan market. For decades, it has made buying homes easier for millions of Indians at affordable rates. Not only that, but it also offers fixed deposits, bank loans, and bonds through its network of over 100 branches across India. Since its inception, its policy has been simple make finance available to everyone. From 2012 to 2016 the company saw steady growth in revenues and reach as its network kept growing.

What was happening in the real estate sector?

In 2017 the company saw a sudden wave of challenges. Unsold homes across India were rising because people were not buying them anymore. There was a negative sentiment in the real estate market, both on the buyer and builder sides because of:

Stiff competition from commercial spaces
Demonetisation
18% GST on real estate purchases
New real estate laws

Because of this home sales dropped to a seven-year low in 2017 and it was 7% less than in 2016.

What was the challenge?

Less demand for homes means less demand for home loans. PNB Housing & Finance’s home loan product was not only famous among the urban home buyers of India but the rural home buyers too. The interest rates were affordable, and PNB had a robust regional presence. To get a loan a home buyer would have to walk into one of their branches, submit an application and supporting documents, and wait for approval and disbursement of the loan.

However, the NBFC noticed that processing the documents took a very long time. The challenge was that customers were unaware of:

  • the loan process,
  • documents needed and how to obtain them,
  • how long does it take to receive the loan amount,
  • how and when they would have to start repaying the loan, and
  • what would happen if they couldn’t repay on time?

Because of this PNB Housing & Finance’s executives were spending many hours coordinating and educating customers. Not only was it becoming exhausting for them to repeat information but many customers were also dropping out in the middle of the process due to information delays.

It was then that PNB Housing & Finance decided to educate its customers on a public platform and approached Project Guru.

How did we help PNB Housing & Finance?

We brainstormed and came up with a proposal that would help PNB Housing & Finance to reach out to every potential customer about their loan process.

  1. Thoroughly reviewed the operational processes and customers’ frequently asked questions.
  2. Developed a series of instructive and informative articles that would not only educate customers about the housing loan dos and don’ts but also about PNB Housing & Finance’s loan disbursement process.
  3. Developed reports that would offer advice to the PNB Housing & Finance team on how they can use the internet to simplify the loan process for home buyers.

What was the outcome?

With the help of the know-how articles and digitisation of its operations, PNB Housing & Finance saw a 20% reduction in the amount of time it took for them to process loans in 2018-19. Their revenues saw an impressive 45% rise in 2018 and 2019, in spite of the challenges the sector was facing. However, the biggest achievement was that customers reacted happily to attaining more knowledge about the real estate and home loans market in India.

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