Heena Sharma Blog

Addressing the media for the second time since the Narendra Modi government imposed a national lockdown on March 25, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced a reduction in reverse repo rate by 25 basis points from 4 per cent earlier to 3.75 per cent now. The reduction in reverse repo rate is one of a slew of announcements made by the RBI governor today. This was his first address since the lockdown was extended till May 3 by the Prime Minister. "The mission is to minimise the epidemiological damage in the country due to coronavirus. I want to convey the RBI's resolve and the way forward," said the RBI governor. Read More

After RBI allowed commercial banks to provide their customers a moratorium of three months for repayment of term loans, public sector banks have sprung into action. Public sector banks have informed their customers about deferment of EMIs and interest dues to help soften the blow due the coronavirus crisis . The deferment may come at a price though. The country's largest lender State Bank of India on Wednesday warned borrowers that deferment of equated monthly instalments (EMIs) offered under the RBI's relief package on account of COVID-19 could put an additional cost on them. The lender also advised borrowers to repay their loans if they are in a position to do the same. SBI said on its website that deferring the EMIs for a home loan of Rs 30 lakhs with a remaining maturity of 15 years, the net additional interest would be approximately Rs 2.34 lakhs, which is equal to eight EMIs. In other words, if customers defers three EMIs then they will end up paying 8 EMIs more...

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued summons to a clutch of borrowers of YES Bank , including Essel group Chairman Subhash Chandra, Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, Cox & Kings promoter Peter Kerkar, Dewan Housing Finance promoter Kapil Wadhawan, and a few more in connection with the money laundering probe against YES Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor. Besides, the federal agency has issued fresh summons to Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani asking him to appear on Thursday. Ambani was summoned on Monday for questioning related to the stressed loans that were sanctioned to ADAG group during Kapoor’s tenure. But he has filed adjournment application with the ED seeking more time. An ED official said it was examining all the big borrowers of YES Bank and that is why each of the borrower had been asked to join the probe this week. Read More

The Indian rupee dropped to a record low on Friday, weighed down by worries over the coronavirus pandemic that has prompted investors to dump riskier assets and move towards safe havens. The dollar stood tall on Friday as investors scrambled for the world's most liquid currency amid deepening panic while the euro nursed losses after the European Central Bank disappointed by not cutting rates. The partially convertible rupee dropped to a record low of 74.5075 against the dollar before recovering slightly to trade at 74.4445 by 0355 GMT. Traders expect the central bank to step in to prevent further sharp falls in the currency but don't see it protecting the rupee at any particular level. Read More

Bindu Rana Kapoor was a director in at least 42 companies, many of them investment companies, data accessed shows, some of whom have been named in the FIR registered by the CBI for receiving kickbacks to the tune of Rs 600 crore from DHFL as a builder loan. Former Yes Bank founder, Rana Kapoor's wife, Bindu was a director in the main investment and holding companies associated with Rana Kapoor, including Morgan Credits, Yes Capital (India), DoIt umbrella companies, RAB among others. The majority of these companies are realty nomenclatured like Bliss, Imagine, Mantra where the suspicion is that the money was siphoned off into realty ventures. In Delhi alone, Rana Kapoor had three bungalows. Some of these companies are named in the CBI FIR in which DHFL is also named. Read More

The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday announced it will not ask customers to maintain a minimum balance in savings accounts, news agency PTI reported. The state-owned bank rationalised interest rate on savings bank accounts to a flat 3 per cent annum. It also waived off SMS charges. “ This announcement will bring in more smiles and delight to our valuable customers. We believe this initiative would empower our customers towards banking with SBI and boost their confidence in SBI," said chairman Rajnish Kumar in a statement. SBI, earlier in the day, slashed its Marginal Cost of Funds based Lending Rate (MCLR) by 10-15 basis points across all tenors from March 10, 2020, moving to make make home and auto loans cheaper. Read More

After YES Ban k was placed under moratorium, digital payments were impacted as PhonePe , which depends on the cash-strapped lender for its transactions, could not operate. It can be noted that the bank's own net banking facilities have not been operational since last evening. Other fintech operators who rely on YES Bank to settle their transactions are also down. We sincerely regret the long outage. Our partner bank (YES Bank) was placed under moratorium by RBI. Entire team's been working all night to get services back up asap (as soon as possible), the app's chief executive Sameer Nigam tweeted early in the morning. PhonePe, one of the country's largest digital payment platforms, is dependent on YES Bank to process its transactions. Read More

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharama assured the depositor that their corpus was safe in YES Bank and the Reserve Bank of India would manage the situation well. She said that the YES Bank board has been bypassed and former State Bank of India chief financial officer Prashant Kumar has been appointed administrator of YES Bank. RBI is finding a solution to this, and no depositor will lose any money, she said. She added that the people can withdraw money to deal with tough situations and the cash crunch is being dealt with. Read More

Defending the timing of YES Bank 's moratorium, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday assured swift resolution to the issues concerning the beleaguered lender. “ The resolution will be done very swiftly, it will be done very fast. 30 days which we have given is the outer limit. You will see a very swift action from RBI,” told reporters after ASSOCHAM's 15th annual banking summit. "The decision is taken at a larger level, not at individual entity level, the move is aimed at ensuring safety of financial system," he added On the timing of the action on YES Bank, Das said there is always debate over RBI acting prematurely or taking too long to act. “ A market-led and bank-led resolution of the problem is always preferable. You have to give time to the bank management to take step and efforts. And the bank did take efforts. When we found that we cannot wait and should not wait any longer, we decided to intervene," Das added. Read...

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) how Google's mobile payment app , GPay, was facilitating financial transactions without the requisite authorisation from it. A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice A J Bhambhani posed the query to RBI while hearing a PIL which claimed that GPay was acting as a payments system provider in violation of the Payments and Settlements Act as it has no valid authorisation from the central bank of the country to carry out such functions. The court issued notice to RBI and Google India seeking their stand on the issue raised in the plea by Abhijit Mishra, who has contended that GPay does not figure in RBI's list of authorised 'payment systems operators' released by the central bank on March 20, 2019. Read More Article Source -> Business Standard

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has permitted authorised card payment networks to offer card tokenisation services to any third party requesting it. Tokenisation acts as an additional layer of security as it masks sensitive card data such as the 16-digit account number, expiration date and security code. It creates a set of numbers that is used to substitute your card information. This ensures that your card information is not disclosed to the website or merchant you are transacting with. "Services such as the Visa Token Service can help prevent fraud by offering financial institutions, merchants, and third party payment providers, such as digital wallet providers, a secure way to enable mobile and online payments without sharing sensitive account information," said T R Ramachandran, Group Country Manager, India & South Asia, VISA. Tokens can be device-specific, retailer-specific or even use case-specific. It is a service offered by leading card networks all a...

With the year coming to an end, and no communication on the issue of updating pension yet, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) could be heading towards big agitations in the New Year. The government was expected to communicate by month-end its nod for improvement of the RBI's pension scheme, but that has not been done yet. In August, the RBI staff went on mass leave, protesting the government's rigid stance on the issue, harming the "real-time gross settlement" system for a few hours. However, this time, the unions may go on an indefinite strike and the RTGS system, which is the backbone of financial transactions in the country, could get severely impacted for days on end, the unions have threatened. What is the RBI pension issue The central bank has a pension kitty of over Rs 160 billion with which it manages the pension of its staff. For this purpose, it doesn't seek money from the government like other central government departments. At the ve...

Job offers for students of Indian Institute of Technology , Madras (IITM) during the first phase of placements for 2018-19 has gone up by nearly 30 per cent compared to last year, the institute said. The number includes pre-placement offers (PPO) as well. IITM said the first in three days of placements (1-3 December 2018) 133 companies arrived at the campus and extended 680 offers to the students. “When combined with 136 PPOs, the total number of offers stands at 816 at the end of Day Three," said IIT Madras authorities. According to IITM, 13 international job offers have also been extended. As many as 20 startups have made 78 offers at the end of Day 3. During the academic year 2017-18, 106 companies made 526 offers (643 including PPOs) at the end of third day of phase I of campus placements. Prof Manu Santhanam, Advisor (Placements), IITM said, “We had a great start to this year’s placements. We hope the strong trend continues over the next four days as ...