State Bank of India on Monday launched a portal on its website for retail customers where they can check their eligibility for one-time loan restructuring announced by the RBI.

Speaking about the portal, SBI’s managing director (retail & digital banking) C S Setty said, “We thought instead of people actually visiting our branches, we can provide this tool and they can initially check their eligibility.”

An eligible customer, however, will have to later visit the bank’s branch for completion of other formalities such as signing of papers and others, he said.

The retail borrowers of the bank will be required to fill their account number on the relevant segment on the bank’s website. Once completed, they will get an OTP validation and keying in the requisite information, customers will get to know their eligibility and receive a reference number.

The bank further said that the reference number will be valid for only 30 days within which borrowers can visit the branch to complete the required formalities. The restructuring will only be completed after the documents are verified and simple documents at branch/CPC are executed.

“We would like to address those who had temporary job loss and are likely to come back, maybe after 6, 8, 9, 12 months or up to 24 months. We are completely relying upon his own assessment because when he will get the job, it”s not in our hands,” Setty said.

The lender has listed a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which will solve most of the queries of the borrowers. As per the same FAQ, a retail borrower who avails restructuring will be required to pay additional interest of 0.35 per cent per annum for the remaining tenure of the loan.

As of now, around 3,500 retail customers of the bank have accessed the portal and out of them 111 are eligible who have got the reference number generated, he said.

It is worth mentioning that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in August, had announced a one-time restructuring scheme for personal loan and corporate borrowers affected by the pandemic.

According to the RBI’s Resolution Framework for COVID-19-related Stress, only those retail borrower accounts shall be eligible for resolution which were standard, but not in default for more than 30 days as on March 1, 2020.

Resolution under this framework may be invoked not later than December 31, 2020 and must be implemented within 90 days from the date of invocation.