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LATEST NEWS  – Have you ever been hounded by telemarketers urging you to apply for a loan? Calls, text messages, WhatsApp or even meeting you in person, representatives of financial companies leave no stone unturned when it comes to convincing you to take a loan. But how is the  LOAN ELIGIBILITY  application processed? Do lenders really bend over backwards to hand you the loan cheque? It does not quite work that way. Yes, sales personnel employed by financial institutions are aggressive in their attempts to lure you. They have to be; their commissions depend on it. And if one takes the bait and applies for a loan, the situation is likely to change by the time the application is processed. It is the borrower who is expected to satisfy the credit parameters and fulfil all the eligibility criteria for the Home Loan. Let’s get down to the basics. What do you think is the main eligibility criteria for taking a Home Loan? The simple answer is the borrower’s abilit...

The layoffs represent slightly less than 12 per cent of ING's 52,000 workforce ING Groep plans to shed 7,000 jobs and invest heavily in its digital platforms to achieve annual savings of 900 million euros ($1 billion) by 2021, the Netherlands' largest financial services company said on Monday. The layoffs represent slightly less than 12 per cent of   ING 's 52,000 workforce because nearly 1,000 are expected to come at suppliers rather than the company itself. The job losses are the heaviest since 2009, when ING was forced to restructure and spin off its insurance activities after receiving a state bailout during the financial crisis. Although other large banks have announced mass layoffs at branch offices in the past year to boost profitability, ING said the job cuts were partly to combine technology platforms and risk control centres as well to help it to contend with regulatory burdens and low interest rates. Read More

United payments system to make mobile wallets redundant: Report The report, by city-based Centrum Broking, stated that   mobile wallet   services like SBI's Buddy, ICICI Bank's Pockets, HDFC Bank's Chillr and standalone operator Paytm will be redundant with the massive adoption of the UPI. "Mobile banking has taken the country by storm, growing by 212% growth in value terms in February 2016 over the same period in 2015 and by 131% in volume. "If the UPI adoption continues mobile wallets like SBI's Buddy, ICICI Bank's Pockets, HDFC Bank's Chillr and Paytm will be redundant," a Centrum Broking said in a report titled- 'Banking Transactions - Technological Disruption'. The report attributed the RBI push to adopt UPI as an effort to lower the cash economy. Quoting RBI data, the report said the cash floating in the system is about 18% of the GDP, making the country one of the most cash-dependent economies in the world. "T...

SBI launches card-less payment solution for offline transactions     State Bank of India, the country's largest public sector bank, has launched a mobile payment solution that will enable customers to make digital payments at offline stores by scanning a QR (quick response) code on their smartphones. The service has been launched in Bengaluru with a sizable number of merchants and will soon expand into other cities. Dubbed   mVisa , the solution is a card-less way for customers to pay for goods at offline stores, and will be available to all SBI credit card, debit card and net banking users. The solution which is bank agnostic will be accessible to customers through the company's SBI Anywhere app. "This cost effective digital offering will not only provide our large base of consumers with an easy, convenient and secure payment product but will also facilitate small merchants with any-time payment, thereby changing the way businesses transact and customers pay,...

ICICI Bank has launched iWork@home, an initiative that allows women employees to work from home for up to a year. Chanda Kochhar, managing director and chief executive officer, ICICI Bank, explained this could be extended for more than one year based on the requirements of the employee. This initiative allows women employees to have access to their required operating systems in a safe and secure manner, creating a seamless office-like environment. Show full article

Moody's Investors Service today said the Budget for 2016-17 is "credit negative" for  PSU banks  as the capital infusion road map falls short of the required Rs 1.45 lakh crore. "The Budget is  credit negative  for public sector banks because the government has stuck to its capital infusion road map announced in 2015, budgeting Rs 25,000 crore in injection," says Srikanth Vadlamani, Moody's Vice-President and Senior Credit Officer. Show full article

Banks must not wait for growth to clean their balance sheets. Rather, growth will come once the books are cleaned, said Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan on Thursday. He did so while rapping the lenders for abusing the tools offered by the central bank to fight bad debt, to instead hide the extent of bad loans. The recent clean-up operation has the central government’s blessings, he noted. Central bank officials had a series of meeting with the government, including at the “highest,” before coming up with its asset quality review (AQR) that is now causing havoc in banks’ quarterly numbers, throwing up heavy NPAs in the books, revealed the governor. Read Full Article Over Here :  Business Standard News

The finance ministry said today that tax collections stood at Rs 10.66 lakh crore in the first eleven months of the current financial year, which was 73.5% of the Budget target of Rs 14.49 lakh crore. However, direct taxcollections might slightly fall short of the budget target, but it would be offset by robust indirect tax collections, it said.  The revenue department expects additional about Rs 40,000 crore to come from indirect taxes, which will offset shortfall in direct tax mop up. Read Full Article Over Here :  Business Standard News Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016

It’s not only the  Reserve Bank of India  but top corporate leaders are also worried that the industrial activity is slowing down in the country despite several steps taken by the Narendra Modi government. The main reasons for the slowdown, they say, are the high interest rates, lack of new orders from other companies and the global commodity crash. “This has not come as a surprise to us and we have been talking to the Indian government on this. We do expect some positive changes in Calender 2016,” said promoter of a large infrastructure company asking not to be quoted. “The third quarter results shows marginal rise in profits for the Indian companies which have announced quarterly results so far.  Read Full Article Over Here :  Business Standard News

Bankers and economists expect the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to maintain status quo in its sixth monetary policy on Tuesday even as room for more rate cuts could open once the  Union Budget  is through on February 29. ALSO READ:  NITI Aayog To FinMin: Stay On Fiscal Consolidation Road Map Govt Calls All Party Meeting To Seek Views On Rescheduling Budget Session   In a pre-policy poll done by Business Standard of 10 institutions, all but one expect RBI to keep its policy repo rate unchanged at 6.75 per cent. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch economist Indranil Sen Gupta, though, expected there were compelling reasons for the central bank to execute a 25 basis point (bps) cut on February 2 and pause thereafter.  Read Full Article Over Here :  Business Standard News  

All public sector and private banks have been asked by the Reserve Bank of India to conduct a “thorough internal audit” and put the report before their respective audit committees, as part of the central bank’s efforts to check fraudulent foreign exchange transactions. The move comes in the wake of irregularities that came to light last year in Rs 6,100-crore import remittances effected by Bank of Baroda’s Ashok Vihar branch in New Delhi. A circular has been issued to all scheduled commercial banks, advising them to conduct a thorough internal audit and place the report before audit committee of the board of the respective banks and to forward the summary of findings to RBI, the central bank said in reply to an RTI query filed by PTI. The RBI was asked to provide details of action being taken by it to check fraudulent forex transactions by banks. “We are in the process of receiving the internal audit report from various banks,”it said.  Read Full Article Over Here :  B...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may look to press the reset button on his leadership this spring to reinvigorate stalled economic reforms and appease critics, eyeing a mix of tried and tested allies and fresh blood, senior government sources said. The government has overseen rapid economic growth, but failed on tax and land reforms, and the euphoria that met Modi’s 2014 election triumph has given way to investor disillusionment; stocks have erased all of their gains since he won power. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces a crucial election test in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh in 2017 that it probably needs to win if it wants to hold on topower nationally in 2019. Read Articles  

Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Wednesday sought to ease fears amid the stock market plunge and therupee nearing its lowest-ever level, saying things will stabilise and people will look at stable emerging markets, including India. The rupee, Rajan said, has been "relatively strong" in the emerging-market currency basket, but India is affected by the "same kind of jitters" hitting other world markets. "My sense is that, at this point, if you are an emerging market, you focus on fundamentals, try and get inflation down, try and get your current account deficit down, keep your fiscal on target, do all the good things, and then people reward you," he said in Davos. ALSO READ: Raghuram Rajan urges Oz firms to invest in Indian market Investors "take the money off the table in a hurry when they are doing it everywhere, but then they come back". "My sense is that after the initial volatility, things will stabilise, people will tr...

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Tuesday the government would continue the thrust on public spending in the upcoming Budget. The government would do this in spite of the additional expenditure burden of nearly Rs 1 lakh crore due to One Rank, One Pension (OROP) and the  Seventh Pay Commission  recommendations for the next financial year. “Public investment has been stepped up in the past year and it will continue to remain stepped up. When you fight a global slowdown, public investment has to lead the way,” Jaitley said at the foundation day of India Infrastructure Finance Company in New Delhi.  Read More