The annual monetary policy getting declared and with it policy rates seeing another hike, a subsequent hike in the lending domain of banks was the next expected step.

Following the same, lenders have started the regime of interest rate hike of various loan products.

Pioneers in the race have been public sector lender, Punjab National Bank and private sector lender, Yes Bank as well as non banking finance company (NBFC), LIC Housing Finance.

Both PNB and Yes Bank have raised their BPLR and base rate by 50 bps each. Thus, the base rate of PNB now stands at 10% while that of Yes Bank stands at 9.5%. The BPLRs of the lenders now stand at 13.5% and 19% respectively.

According to CEO of LICHF, Mr V K Sharma, "The floating and fixed rates of LIC Housing Finance are now linked to its PLR which was not the case earlier."

Other lenders like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have hinted that their loan rates can see a 50-100 bps rise while SBI hinted towards a 25 bps hike.