MUMBAI: India’s retail credit market is showing a widening gap between the number of borrowers being added and the value of loans being accumulated, with consumer durable loans driving new borrower acquisition, while home and gold loans account for much of the portfolio growth.According to credit bureau CRIF’s ‘How India Lends’ report, gold loan outstandings jumped 62.2% to Rs 21.7 lakh crore, while home loan outstandings rose 10.5% year-on-year to Rs 45.5 lakh crore in Q1 FY27. Yet origination volumes (new disbursements) for gold loans fell 4.5% year-on-year to 3.7 crore, while home loans grew by a modest 6.4% to 8.3 lakh. Quarter-on-quarter, gold and home loan volumes dropped 25.6% and 17.3%, respectively.Consumer durable loans, however, grew both in volume and value. The origination volume grew 27.4% year-on-year to 2.9 crore, while the origination value grew 36.6%, with portfolio outstanding reaching Rs 1.2 lakh crore as of June 2026 from Rs 89,300 crore a year earlier. Consumer loans also defied the seasonal trend, growing 21.4% from Rs 1,00,500 crore as of March 2026. Consumer durables accounted for 45.5% of all new-to-credit borrower volumes in India, more than twice the share of gold loans at 18.3% and personal loans at 18.2%.
