CCI Closes Complaint Against Indiabulls Over High Interest Rates Due to Presence of Other Banks, NBFCs in Loan Market

Case Details: Anil Bansal v. Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd. - [2024] 165 taxmann.com 18 (CCI)

Judiciary and Counsel Details

• Ms Ravneet Kaur, Chairperson, Sweta Kakkad, Deepak Anurag & Anil Agrawal, Members

Facts of the Case

In the instant case, the Informant entered into an agreement with OP, a housing finance company, to avail loans against property from OP. The Informant received email communications whereby OP increased its benchmark interest rate. The Informant sent an email to OP requesting OP to furnish loan statements for loans to settle the same or reduce the exorbitant amount of rate of interest.

The Informant filed instant information against OP alleging that OP was engaged in unfair trade practices, taking advantage of its dominant position, and OP imposed unjust, excessively high rates of interest, which not only contravened fairness but also exhibited discriminatory tendencies in violation of section 4 of the Competition Act.

Further, it was submitted that an agreement between banks and consumers, entailing the imposition of a higher rate of interest, constituted an anti-competitive action under section 3 of the Act.

It was observed from information in the public domain that the relevant market, i.e., the provision of loans against property in India, appeared to be competitive with the presence of a large number of banks, non-banking financial companies, and housing finance companies.

CCI Held

The CCI noted that the agreement with an end-consumer, like in the instant case was not envisaged as an anti-competitive agreement under section 3 of the Act.

The CCI held that since OP’s dominance was not established in the relevant market, no case was made out under section 4, and no competition concern arose in the instant matter under provisions of section 3 and section 4 of the Act. Therefore, the instant information was to be closed under section 26(2) of the Act.