State Bank of India (SBI) Home Loan Experience. Review on State Bank Of India

In this review I will just briefly touch upon my 2.6 years of experience with State Bank of India(SBI) with respect to my Home Loan.

The idea behind this review is to make a prospective home loan taker aware of various issues with SBI so that he/she can avoid any hassles later on.

The Home Loan process was quite comfortable for me as my apartment was pre-approved. However I had to go to the branch twice for completing the formalities because of their poor processes. Also the attitude of bank officials is like a Government employee, they may ask you couple of times to take your file from one person to another and so on.

The bank officials tried to push me for SBI Life insurance indicating that its mandatory even though I already had a life insurance from SBI. I somehow miraculously escaped this which is a very long story. The bottom line is that its not mandatory to take a life insurance at the time of home loan.

Getting the yearly provisional home loan certificate for income tax purpose is really a pain. You have to do lot of follow up if you cannot go to the branch personally.

No response over email for any queries. Phone may not be picked up and even if it is picked the chances of your queries getting resolved is faint unless you visit the branch.

However, the recently launched "UNHAPPY" sms service is a real boon and gives Customers a way to make their voice heard.

Overall, if you have time to follow up with bank for every small need and the interest rate difference matters a lot to you then go for SBI otherwise you might be better off with some private sector bank.

Thanks & Regards,

Neeraj