COVID-19 impact: Have requested RBI that moratorium sought by consumers should be given, says M&M Fin Services

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have shut down production due to COVID-19, which obviously have an impact on vehicle financiers.

Ramesh Iyer, vice chairman and managing director at Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services said, “There is an uncertainty about tomorrow. So people had started becoming cautious but even more important is that the overall activities have started to reduce and therefore people’s earnings will start to reduce but these are times where instead of worrying about what is going to happen to the growth and things like that – we are looking at how do we help out the consumers.”

“It is still not as impactful in the rural market as we see in urban. My guess is that people will have to figure out after things get normal, they will start relooking at what else to do, how else to do. So the real impact we will know only three months down the line,” he added.

“If the consumers need additional time, we will give them surely. We do not want to penalize them with a penal interest for non-payment and all that. More importantly, if consumers need some kind of a temporary short-term loan after things get to some normal then we will  look at what could be that short-term small ticket loans to the existing consumers whom we may want to support and partner them to come out of this situation as things start to improve,” said Iyer.

“I personally think new earning models possibly may emerge in rural markets. A situation like this is going to push everyone to rethink,” he further mentioned.

“We have told the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that consumers are already asking us for moratorium and we would request that moratorium be provided. We have also said that these are the times where maybe the non-performing assets (NPAs) norms itself will have to be rewritten to say it is not 90-days delinquent but 180-days kind of a delinquent and it is more to protect the good customers who have been paying so far,” he said.

Speaking about growth, he said, “At the beginning of this quarter itself the volumes started to shrink because everybody was preparing for BS-VI transition and therefore the inventory levels started to come down. To top it all now with the COVID-19 scare - even the little possible sales that were likely to happen have come to an end. January-February was average, March has been absolute no-number kind of a month, so I would think that it would be a low single digit growth book or for some it may not even be that.”