Two-thirds of NTC consumers were from semi-urban areas in 2021: Report

More than two-third of the new to credit customers in India hailed from the rural and semi-urban areas in 2021, according to a credit information company.

Women, farmers and youth lead the charge on the New To Credit (NTC) customer addition front, which is desirable from a financial inclusion perspective, Transunion Cibil said on Tuesday.

In 2021, the total number of NTC customers stood at 35 million while the January-September 2022 period saw 31 million additions, it said in a report.

NTC consumers are ones with no prior credit history on their credit bureau file who opened their first-ever, traditional credit product such as a consumer durable loan, personal loan, agricultural loan, two-wheeler, gold loan or home loan.

More than a fourth of the NTC customers in the first nine months of 2022 started their credit journey by availing a consumer durable loan, followed by 16 per cent who took an agricultural loan and 13 per cent availed personal loans, it said.

Among the NTC consumers who opened consumer durable loans as their first credit product, a higher proportion were women, the report said.

The report also said that nearly half of the NTC consumer durable loan borrowers opened subsequent products within the first two years of opening their first product.

"The socio-economic evolution in India has seen the emergence of women, youth and rural as leading and profitable customer segments in the market," the company's managing director and chief executive Rajesh Kumar said.