



Mint Explainer | Banks have cut rates—but has the credit-deposit imbalance changed?
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has lowered the repo rate by 125 basis points (bps) in this rate cut cycle and governor Sanjay Malhotra reiterated that rates will remain lower for longer. While banks have lowered both lending and deposit rates, these were not entirely in tandem.Amid all this, credit growth in the banking system continues to outpace deposit growth.
Mint takes a look at what some recent data on credit and deposit released by RBI say about the banking system and its customer base.The weighted average lending rates of banks on fresh loans fell 66 basis points (bps) in the past year till January 2026 and stood at 8.67%. The steepest transmission was seen in foreign banks, where lending rates fell 148 bps to 7.81% in the same period.While public sector banks saw a 54 bps dip to 8.05%, private sector banks saw a decline of 88 bps to 9.32%.
On the deposit rate side, the banking system’s deposits pay 96 bps lower than they did in January 2025, as per RBI data.Here too, foreign banks have outstripped peers in cutting deposit rates. Jahnavi Prabhakar, economist at Bank of Baroda said in a note on 3 March that transmission has been more pronounced for the lending rates than deposit rates.
RBI uses changes in the repo rate to regulate lending rates in the financial system. Following RBI’s push in 2019, banks now use an external benchmark like the repo rate to price retail and small business loans.
These loans see near immediate change in interest rates as and when RBI revises the repo rate.Loans to companies are still linked to the marginal cost of funds-based lending rate (MCLR), an internal benchmark. Both of these rates are floating, meaning that they change throughout the tenure of the loan.As of September 2025,
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