Chennai: Women were seen increasingly active in the credit market in the past few years. In unsecured personal debt they are at decadal high, while their average credit card loan outstanding has grown larger than that of men in 2024.According to Capitalmind, women are at decadal highs in terms of loan market share in unsecured personal debt.Women accounted for 17 per cent of unsecured personal loans till 2020. This started moving up after the pandemic and by 2024, women’s share rose to 21 per cent with men’s share shrinking from 83 per cent to 79 per cent during the period.Women exceeded men in credit card outstanding as well.Up until 2023, men always had the higher outstanding amount in credit cards, but this changed post that and the trend has continued to diverge ever since then.In 2020, the average credit card loan outstanding held by women was Rs 22,500 and that of men was Rs 24,200. The loan outstanding of women credit card borrowers started moving up faster than that of men after the pandemic. By 2023, it was equal for a brief time. By 2024, women’s loan outstanding went up to Rs 34,300 and that of men went up to Rs 31,500.Education loans availed by women also are seeing faster growth compared to men. Women borrowers had seen a negative growth of 0.1 per cent in 2021. In the subsequent quarters, education loans saw a steep rise. By 2024, the growth peaked at 27.9 per cent.In the case of men, education loans saw a de-growth of 4.2 per cent in 2021. By 2024, the growth peaked at 16.5 per cent, much lower than the growth rate among women. According to Capitalmind, women are taking two times more education loans compared to pre-pandemic levels. While the average loan amount has almost doubled, the number of accounts has gone up to 8 lakh.This helped the share of outstanding credit by women students rise since the pandemic. It stood at 33 per cent of the total education loans in 2020 and moved up to 39 per cent at the end of 2024.
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