executive director of union bank of india which took the lead in lowering home loan rates in may in april the governmentthe majority owner in staterun banks instructed them to turn aggressive on retail loans financial services secretary dk mittal told the chief executives of public sector players to make their rates competitive visavis private rivals the move seems to have paid off personal loans grew the highest at 37 per cent in august compared with 14 per cent for services and 09 per cent for industry on an annual basis data from the rbi shows the outstanding home loans of commercial banks stood at rs 418 lakh crore up 153 per cent over the yearago period the figure however excludes specialist mortgage lenders such as housing development finance corp staterun banks with their extensive branch network are bestsuited to exploit the retail business and with a new it infrastructure in place they have started flaunting their presence to garner retail business lenders such as allahabad bank uco or united bank aim to raise the share of retail loans to about 20 per cent of total loan portfolio in the next three years from around 1214 per cent now retail lending gives banks two definite advantages first it spreads the risk unlike in the case of large corporate loans and second after tying up customers with retail loans we get the advantage of capturing the whole gamut of their banking needs said uco banks kaul