SBI, ICICI Banks Raise Benchmark Lending Rate By Up To 0.2 Per Cent

Home, auto and other loans would become costlier as the country's largest leading lenders SBI and ICICI banks on Saturday increased their benchmark lending rates or MCLR by up to 0.2 per cent.

The new rates are effective from yesterday. The country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has increased the lending rate by 20 basis points across all tenors up to three years. Now SBI's overnight and one-month tenors' Marginal Cost of Funds Based Lending Rate (MCLR) stands at 8.1 per cent as against 7.9 per cent, as per the SBI's website.

The MCLR for a one-year tenor increased to 8.45 per cent from 8.25 per cent earlier. Most of the retail loans are benchmarked against one-year MCLR. In case of ICICI Bank, the one-year MCLR was increased by 0.15 per cent to 8.55 per cent, the bank statement said.

The MCLR for a three-year tenor of SBI increased to 8.65 per cent from 8.45 per cent. Both the banks had last revised their MCLR in June, just before the second bi-monthly monetary policy review

The rate hike by bank comes a month after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) hiked benchmark lending rate called repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.5 per cent.

The RBI had last raised the repo rate on June 6 by 0.25 per cent to 6.25 per cent. That increase was the first since January 28, 2014, when rates were hiked by a similar proportion to 8 per cent.