Title: Rising mortgage fraud in India - a case study-based analysis of loopholes in existing lending practices

Authors: Soumen Sarkar; Sujit Kumar Paul

Addresses: Visva-Bharati University, 237 NSC Bose Road, Block-C, Flat-12, Kolkata, 700047, India ' Department of Lifelong Learning and Extension, Visva-Bharati University, Sriniketan Campus, India

Abstract: Indian banks are nowadays emphasising on retail lending, through mortgage of immovable properties, which is in turn augmenting asset-backed exposures in their books of accounts, and thereby attempts to increase the risk containment. While this secured approach of institutional lending is apparently supporting the financial inclusion agenda of India, but the increasing trend of mortgage related frauds is rising as a serious threat to the country's financial stability and exposing the general public at large to severe financial risk. These concerns have stimulated the need to carry out an in-depth research of the present mechanism followed in banking industry and government departments towards dealing with equitable mortgage of immovable properties. This article contributed case studies related to generic mortgage loan and illustrated ease occurrence of frauds therein. The study concluded with suggestive measures to plug the loopholes in existing mechanism followed in India to deal with mortgage of immovable properties.

Keywords: financial inclusion; financial stability; bank fraud; mortgage loan; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICBM.2021.117479

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 2021 Vol.23 No.4, pp.474 - 489

Received: 01 May 2020
Accepted: 26 Jul 2020
Published online: 08 Sep 2021 *

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