RBI Cuts CRR by 0.5%
The Reserve Bank of India has cut the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) for banks, as a percentage of deposits, to 5.5% from the earlier 6%. This is, they say, to manage the liquidity situation, where banks...
View ArticleNPAs Hidden By Restructuring
Tamal Bandyopadhyay has a great article on the growing NPA situation in banks. While many public sector lender NPAs have gone up, the NPAs in private banks have fallen. This could Some banks are...
View ArticleRBI Cuts CRR by 0.75% From March 10, 2012
The Reserve Bank of India has cut the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by 0.75% to bring it down to 4.75%. This, I think, is the lowest ever. In order to mitigate tight liquidity conditions, the cash reserve...
View ArticleBanking On The Ombudsman
I write at Yahoo on the Banking Ombudsman: Have you been hassled by credit card bills even after you have had a "full and final settlement"? Did a bank give you a bill for a credit card you don't …
View ArticleCash Reserve and Liquidity Ratios: A Primer
This is a guest post by Dheeraj Singh. Dheeraj is a former fund manager for many years specializing in fixed income. Used to head fixed income at IL&FS Mutual Fund (before it got taken over by UTI)...
View ArticleRupay Kicks Off with Debit Cards
The National Payments Corporation of India (NCPI) has started Rupay, a domestic card payment network. NPCI already is at the back-end of the India wide bank ATM network and runs IMPS, the Interbank...
View ArticleLiquidity Very Tight: Repo at 199K cr.
Repo overnight borrowing is now nearly Rs. 2 trillion (200,000 cr.), which is 3% of “Net Demand and Time Liabilities” (which at last note was about 64 trillion). The RBI comfort level is 1% of NDTL....
View ArticleRBI Bans Preclosure Penalties Officially
The RBI has officially banned Preclosure Penalties on all housing loans: (Notification) RBI/2011-12/589 DBOD. No. Dir. BC.107/13.03.00/2011-12 June 5, 2012 All Scheduled Commercial Banks (Excluding...
View ArticlePre-RBI Action Notes: The Broad Picture
Before the RBI mid-quarter monetary policy review later today, let's go through a few things. Indian Situation Growth has slowed. GDP is officially down to 5.3%, though I believe even that is...
View ArticleIndia’s Broken Interest Rate Transmission
(From my article at Yahoo) Growth is slowing. At the 5.3% official growth rate, India has grown the slowest in the March quarter in 8 years. Even that is considered suspiciously high, since we are...
View ArticleLIEBOR: Banks Manipulate the Global Benchmark Rate
The big news of the last few days has been LIEBOR - or how banks like Barclays, Citi, HSBC, JP Morgan and so on - manipulated the London Interbank Overnight Rate, or LIBOR. LIBOR is a world standard...
View ArticleRBI Makes Payable-At-Par Cheques (Nearly) Mandatory
In a notification, RBI has mandated that Banks with core banking systems (that is, most banks) must offer cheques that will be payable at par (that is, not intra-city or inter-city collection charges)...
View ArticleBank Credit Growth Slows and Crowding-Out Effect is Visible
Bank Credit growth as of October 5 has slumped to 15.9%, which is close to a near term low. Bank credit is all the credit that isn't to the government, so it really means private lending (including to...
View ArticleFinMin Pressures RBI to Prolong Housing Bubble?
In response to buyers not being able to afford property and thus not allowing builders to buy more Bentleys*, the Finance Ministry has asked RBI to consider making housing a part of the "infra" sector,...
View ArticleRBI Suggests Large Penalties for Restructured Loans
RBI has, in its draft guidelines, made it more difficult for banks to restructure loans. (See: What is loan restructuring?) Suggested in the guidelines are: Two months from now, from March 2013, banks...
View ArticleCitibank Forces Suvidha Accounts To Rs. 100,000 Minimum Balance
Two people in my family received a registered post from Citibank when we weren’t around; and knowing Citibank I was sure something bad was going on, so we went to the post office pronto and fetched two...
View ArticleRBI Announces Guidelines For New Banks
It’s finally here. RBI has announced guidelines for new private sector banks. Phew. The first paragraph says why I’m thankful: Over the last two decades, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) licensed twelve...
View ArticleUsing your Credit Card at Foreign Sites? Get an EMV Chip-based Card
RBI has introduced new regulations on Feb 28, 2013 that mandate changes to all credit and debit cards issued by Indian banks. All these are applicable from Jun 30, 2013. All new credit and debit cards...
View ArticleCobraPost Exposes Wily Tricks of Bankers
Cobrapost has an “expose” on how employees of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have been revealed as “blatantly running a huge Nation-Wide Money Laundering Racket”. They have a number of videos...
View ArticleHelaine Olen on The Daily Show on Guru-sters
On The Daily Show, Helaine Olen, who wrote the book "Pound Foolish", talks about the way personal finance gurus tend to tell us about all these things and yet, they're all still end up leaving us less...
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