Challenges
of Housing Finance Sector
Today, probably there are only three major challenges that occupies the mind of a CEO in housing finance sector. They are
1. Access to low-cost funds
2. Top line growth &
3. Trained manpower
In addition to that one can list down many other issues like title to property in affordable segment, stamp duty, registration charges and many others. All these have been a problem for a long time, and it may take time to address as the industry has been working collectively on some of these issues with the government and the regulator for quite some time.
In pre-2000 era, I think the focus would have been on funds and that would be on the top of the mind of a CEO and trained manpower would have been at the lower ebb considering the fact that one had to take only fresher’s and train. Today, the pace of new organization entering the market is throwing two types of balance transfers. The first is well known that is balance transfer of loans and the second is balance transfer of human resources probably at the same rate.
At the moment, Top line growth is a challenge in retail new home loans segment considering the market scenario. However, the affordable segment is showing some silver lining. Will that sustain if everyone moves into it? Do all of them have the expertise to look at the segment? I think there are number of questions.
The last is “Trained Manpower”. I think the amount of money spent in recruiting and holding for six to 12 months of floating human resources should be getting expensive. If one adds the cost of outsourced resources, it can have multiplier effect in adding to the cost and dampening the bottom line. In this context it is important to focus on training and certifying human resources. We at Virtuoweb, have launched India’s first Certified Mortgage Professional program on our online digital learning platform i.e., “Virtuoskill”.