'Tell us where to park our car'

.... C.A.Ingole, a member of RBI employee's society at Bharat Nagar, said that to penalize car owners for using the road for parking was not a solution. "Authorities should come up with an alternative and solve parking problems in different areas. Car owners and other four wheelers could be provided open spaces near their homes for parking vehicles in night time by levying some charge. NMC should also provide good public transport so a lot of people will not buy cars," he said.........

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D Sarkar takes over as head of Union Bank of India

 New Delhi: Union Bank of India Monday said D Sarkar has taken over as Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of the state-owned lender. Sarkar replaces M V Nair, who headed the bank for 6 years. He has taken charge as CMD of the Bank from April 1, Union Bank of India said in a filing on the BSE Monday.  Prior to this, Sarkar was executive director of Kolkata- based Allahabad Bank. He started his career with Bank of Baroda in 1982.

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State Bank of Hyderabad feels young @ 70!

State Bank of Hyderabad is a blend of tradition and modernity in banking. Originally set up in 1942, it was the central bank of the erstwhile Hyderabad state and managed the then currency, Osmania Sikka, and public debt........

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Read "Subsidiaries of the State Bank"

Can Turkey offer lessons to RBI?

“If a country like Turkey with high inflation can reduce interest rates and achieve growth, why cannot we?” asked the aggressive chief financial officer of a mid sized Indian company. I was dumbfounded, as my knowledge about Turkey extended to nothing beyond belly dancers, its currency the Lira and the city of Istanbul. I started mugging up the economics lessons I learnt in my college days; "If the inflation persists, you raise interest rates (make money dearer) and any easing of rates spurs economic growth and also fuels inflation in the longer run.".........

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Banks, NBFCs brace for another deposit rate war

.....The financial services industry may be waiting with bated breath for a possible interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), when it announces its monetary policy later this month. But, banks and financial institutions appear to be in the mood to extend the deposit rate war further.....

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DBS Bank keen to operate as wholly owned subsidiary in India

....The RBI has said that foreign banks converting into wholly owned subsidiary would be placed in a much better position than the foreign bank branches operating in India but less than that of domestic banks. This would provide very significant incentives for the subsidiary mode of presence for foreign banks in India. ....

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Sebi’s arguments in Tayal case simply don’t wash

..... Reserve Bank of India had asked the promoters of the bank to reduce their stake based on its regulatory requirements. According to the findings of the preliminary investigation, which have now been attested in the recent order as well, the Tayal Group gave the impression that........

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Whither flows bank credit?

While the overall bank lending has slowed in recent times, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) data on sectoral deployment of credit has some interesting points when one looks at advances for the three months ended February..............

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FM recipe for Bengal growth

....RBI Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn said the Bengal government needed to formulate policies to harness and build on the potential competitive strengths in some industrial activities. “Bengal is exploring a long-term strategy for industrialisation as the relative growth performance in the last decade was not encouraging,” Gokarn said. ......

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SEBI trashes major recommendations of the Bimal Jalan Committee

....Clearly SEBI has not accepted a large number of suggestions of Bimal Jalan Committee. Mr Jalan, a former RBI Governor, who quit the central bank rather abruptly and was made a Rajya Sabha member in early 2003, was appointed by former SEBI chief CB Bhave to review the issue of ownership and governance of stock exchanges, among other market infrastructure institutions 2010.....

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RuPay: With this RBI initiative, India gets ready for a cashless revolution

The Reserve Bank of India deserves to be commended for the initiative it has taken to launch RuPay, an indigenous, cheaper alternative to the card-based payment systems such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express. It got local banks to promote a not-for-profit National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the author of RuPay, which offers the same services offered by Visa and MasterCard, but at a much cheaper cost…

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RBI asks MFIs to use local language for agreement

The Reserve Bank of India wants micro-finance institutions to have their loan agreements cleared by their boards, preferably in the local language. In the revised guidelines on fair practices for the recently-created non-banking finance company-MFI category, it has also asked them to use a standard form of loan agreement to achieve greater transparency...........

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Cheque the writing on the wall

“Can you please send a cheque?” This question could become a joke in a few years. If you doubt it, can you tell when was the last time you received or sent a money order? There may be some who would have received or sent one recently, but the number of people using it seems to be on the decline........

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Govt may amend Act to make Aadhaar data valid ID proof

...... We had included the letter of Aadhaar containing the name, address and number as an official valid document in PMLA. Now we are looking into whether the electronic Aadhaar authentication can also be included as a valid KYC,” said a finance ministry official who did not want to be identified. “In principle, we have no objections to this.” The finance ministry has written to all entities, including the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Financial Intelligence Unit and the home ministry for their views on the safety aspects of such a move, he said. ……

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'Banks Can't Freeze Accounts If KYC Papers Not Given'

The Gujarat High Court has ruled that banks cannot freeze accounts nor can they stop issuing cheque book or providing ATM facility where the account holder has not supplied KYC (Know Your Customer) documents...........

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No respite for existing home loans as banks cut rates for new borrowers

When it comes to increasing home loan rates, banks believe in following an across-the-board policy and hike rates for all and sundry. However, in case of reduction, the policy is aimed to benefit only new borrowers as lenders try to grab more market share………….

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NO RATE CUT ‘Go to banking ombudsman’

New Delhi : In a bid to garner a greater share of new home loan borrowers, banks are cutting lending rates for them while maintaining old rates for existing customers. Coming to the lenders’ defence, bankers said that the base rates have not been changed by IDBI Bank and Canara Bank, and the lower rates should be seen as “special offers”. An official in a regulatory agency said that old borrowers could move to new rates by paying a “reasonable” conversion charge, an offer that is available for several banks such as State Bank of India and Housing Finance Companies (HFCs). A top RBI official said, “Banks can’t discriminate between old and new customers”, but advised borrowers to approach the ombudsman with their grievance. The regulator for HFCs such as HDFC and LIC Housing Finance, however,seems to be one up on RBI. “We recently issued a clarificatory circular asking HFCs to migrate all borrowers to a risk profile-based regime by April 30,” NHB chairman R V Verma told TOI. So, irrespective of when you have taken the loan, if your risk profile matches someone’s who borrows from the same HFC today, you are entitled to the same rate. How do you find that out is a different matter, unless the regulator comes up with a risk profiling system and ask lenders to make it public. NHB is not doing so at least now.  “It’s a process that will mature over a period of time. Different HFCs will have their own risk assessment and as the system matures, seasoning of the methodology will happen,” Verma said.

TOI

Know your customer or keep away that customer? -T.V. Gopalakrishnan

.....It is no wonder that financial inclusion does not take off — most people would prefer to remain outside the banking system than comply with the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms of banks as reportedly prescribed by the Reserve Bank of India. My experience with the country's largest bank, the State Bank of India, is something worth recording to bring to the authorities' notice that the KYC procedure should be a simple one to understand your customers and not to keep away or kill your prospective customers...........

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Fake notes entering UP via Nepal

……The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and other nationalized banks have recently drafted a detailed list of security features on currency notes which can detected by common man and do not require a gadget or an expert to establish if the currency is counterfeit or genuine.

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Raise provisions to keep banking healthy

.... I can’t recall another instance of RBI buying bonds from banks just ahead of the close of a fiscal year and after the completion of the government’s borrowing programme. In……

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