Bengaluru: In the average ticket size of personal loans taken, Mumbai (Rs 2.79 lakh) was ahead of Bengaluru (Rs 2.66 lakh) and other metros, according to data from 1.6 million loan applications in 2018 with BankBazaar, one of the country’s biggest online financial services aggregators.

In home loans, Delhiites took the highest ticket sizes (Rs 5 crore), followed by Chennai (Rs 2.2 crore), Bengaluru (Rs 1.5 crore) and Mumbai (Rs 1.8 crore).

The highest personal loan ticket sizes however were in Bengaluru, at Rs 47 lakh, followed by Mumbai (Rs 40 lakh), Delhi (Rs 26 lakh) and Kolkata (Rs 30 lakh).

BankBazaar CEO Adhil Shetty said the large loans in Bengaluru were perhaps a reflection of larger disposable income and high-growth opportunities. He said the city also had more first-time salaried borrowers than other metros.

Since the data is of those who use the online mode, it is possible that in some of the other cities, a higher proportion of people chose offline modes and less transparent payment methods in car loans too, the top segment of Bengalureans took higher loans than their counterparts elsewhere, suggesting their preferance for flashy cars.

The highest car loan ticket sizes came from Bengaluru, at Rs 49.9 lakh, followed by Chennai at Rs 46.8 lakh, and Delhi at Rs 21.8 lakh.

Compared to their urban counterparts, borrowers from tier-2, and tier-3 cities restrict themselves to not spending above Rs 20 lakh for a car. Even when it came to average car loan size, rural and semi-urban borrowers were more conservative and borrowed only up to Rs 5.2 lakh, compared to their urban counterparts, who were willing to shell out Rs 5.7 lakh. The highest car purchase by a woman borrower in 2018 was at Rs 12.9 lakh.

In personal loans, Bankbazaar’s data shows that the average ticket size in metros was at Rs 2.6 lakh, lower when compared to Rs 2.8 lakh in nonmetros. “It’s possible that urban users have more choices such as credit card, and EMI options for consumer purchases on debit cards, and may not choose a personal loan as their first option,” said Shetty.

But this trend could only be an indicator of the buying pattern of younger, tech-savvy individuals. An SBI official said, “We get out biggest home loan and car loan requests from Mumbai. It’s possible that Mumbaikars prefer directly contacting their banker than going through a thirdparty aggregator.”