STUDYING BORROWER LEVEL RISK CHARACTERISTICS OF EDUCATION LOAN IN INDIA

Abstract This paper empirically investigates the granular level risk of education loan using a cross section of data from 5000 borrowers obtained from four major public sector banks in India. The findings suggest that education loan defaults are mainly influenced by security, borrower margin, and repayment periods. The presence of guarantor or co-borrower and collateral significantly reduce default loss rates. The socioeconomic characteristics of borrowers and their regional locations also act as important factors associated with education loan defaults. The results suggest that by segmenting borrowers by probability of default and loss given default in a multidimensional scale, banks can adopt better risk mitigation and pricing strategies to resolve borrower problems.