Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Friday launch two schemes of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that may go a long way in changing how the household sector invests, and complains if anything goes wrong with their savings. These schemes - retail direct and an integrated ombudsman - will be launched by the Prime Minister virtually, in the presence of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. With the introduction of retail direct, a common man can directly take a position in government securities (G-Sec), considered to be the safest asset class a sovereign can offer.
'Rather than experimenting with CBDCs, we must come up with a very simple and straight design.' 'Dematerialise your currency/cash and with that dematerialised rupee allow all the transactions digitally.'
Credit card spends jumped 57 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in September, aided by the festive season. According to the latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, in September, credit card spends totalled Rs 80,477.18 crore compared to Rs 77,981 crore in August, thereby registering a 3.2 per cent growth sequentially, despite the high base. In the corresponding period last year, credit card spend was to the tune of Rs 51,356.68 crore.
More than three weeks have passed since the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) new guidelines on e-mandates for recurring payments came into effect but consumers are still taking to social media platforms to complain about the disruptions they are facing. This comes as most stakeholders in the ecosystem have not put in place systems in accordance with the new rules, resulting in many transactions not going through. Industry sources said most banks are still not ready, especially the smaller ones.
Nearly two million e-mandates for recurring payments have been registered with banks and card networks after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made it mandatory from October 1 to take prior consent of a customer before debiting her account, sources in know of the matter said. Industry estimates peg the recurring transactions at approximately 2.5 per cent of the total volume of transactions, and about 1.5 per cent in terms of value. Of these, around 75 per cent of domestic recurring transactions, and about 85 per cent international recurring payments are below Rs 5,000.
After the second wave of the pandemic, general and health insurers have seen a fall in their outgo of Covid-related health claims. In the July-September quarter (Q2 of FY22), insurers settled a little over Rs 5,000 crore worth of Covid health claims. This is 35 per cent lower than the Rs 7,700 crore worth of claims they settled in Q1, sources said.
'But we are much better than what we all had expected and planned, and what all the prophets of doom had predicted.'
Come October, life insurers may have to tighten their underwriting standards further for retail term plans at the behest of one of the largest reinsurers in the Indian insurance market, Munich Re. According to a source aware of the development, "Munich Re has been studying long-term mortality trends for the past few years, and has suggested some tightening in the underwriting process." "As far as financial underwriting is concerned, the reinsurer has suggested that insurers should ask for additional documents. "For example, apart from income proof, they can ask for bank statements of the prospective customer before issuing policies," added the source.
Twenty years after India's insurance sector was opened up, unshackling the control of state-owned companies, as many as 50 private players have set up shop. Along with their foreign partners, private players have brought about a sea change in the product offering, distribution and underwriting processes, and services levels. Yet, India's insurance penetration needle has not moved much.
Bumper-to-bumper insurance cover for new vehicles will not be mandatory as suggested by the Madras high court in its order last month. Instead, the decision to make it mandatory or not will be left to the legislators and the parliament. On Monday, the court decided to modify its order, which had said that whenever a new vehicle is sold after 1.9.2021, it is mandatory for coverage of bumper-to-bumper insurance every year, in addition to covering the driver, passengers, and owner of the vehicle, for a period of five years.
If the court order is implemented, it will lead to an increase in the insurance outgo for car owners by a minimum Rs 50,000 for car and a minimum of Rs 7,000 for two-wheeler owners.
The payments industry is at a crossroads with the banking regulator on two pressing issues, neither of which seems headed towards an amicable solution. Depending upon which side accommodates the other, customers in India will have to choose between convenience and ironclad safety. In the end, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which regulates both banks and all payments services providers, will prevail. But the question is: will it do so by bending a little or by sticking to its firm stand? The two issues - one concerning payment facilitators storing customers' card details and the other about auto-renewal of payments - appear similar but aren't.
'Covid-related claims were almost 2.5 times the normal claims size.'
A day after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lifted its ban on HDFC Bank on issuing new credit cards, the country's largest private sector lender on Wednesday said it had resources and plans in place to "further reinforce pole position in the credit card segment" and that it would "come back with a bang". "We will aggressively go to the market, with not just our existing suite of credit cards but also new offerings in the form of co-brands and partnerships," Sashidhar Jagdishan, managing director and chief executive officer of HDFC Bank, said in a letter to his employees. The bank's management had earlier indicated that the lender had been sourcing liability customers aggressively over the past few months.
In an indication of easing financial stress among borrowers, the number of unsuccessful auto-debit requests through the National Automated Clearing House (NACH) platform declined in July, reversing a three-month trend that started with the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the NACH data, of the 86.4-million transactions initiated in July, 33.23 per cent, or 28.7 million transactions, failed, while 57.7 million were successful. Compared to June, this is a significant improvement in bounce rates.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday gave banks time till October 31 to comply with its guidelines on current account and overdraft facilities. The central bank indicated that it was in no mood to change the proposed rules, but would only allow for stretching the timeline for smoother implementation. The initial deadline had ended on July 31, leading to thousands of current accounts being closed or frozen by banks. Lenders had requested the RBI for some more time to resolve the operational issues in implementing the provisions of the August 2020 circular in letter and spirit.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the flagship payments platform of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), made a record in volume and value of transactions in July as digital payments rise in the pandemic. UPI processed a record 3.24 billion transactions in July up 15.7 per cent from June when it processed 2.8 billion transactions. In value terms, in July, the platform processed transactions worth Rs 6.06 trillion, up 10.76 per cent from June.
The non-life insurance industry has received over 1 million Covid-related claims in the first quarter of the current fiscal year (Q1FY22), higher than in the entire FY21, indicating the severity of the second wave of the pandemic. According to the General Insurance Council data, which is not publicly available, non-life insurers have received 1.22 million Covid-related claims so far in FY22 and have settled 944,573 of those worth Rs 9,178 crore. In comparison, they had received 986,366 Covid claims in FY21 and settled 849,034.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday allowed payment system providers, prepaid card issuers, card networks and white label ATM operators access to its Centralised Payment Systems (CPS), such as real time gross settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) systems in the first phase of its plan bring non-banks in the same platform. "Direct access for non-banks to CPS lowers the overall risk in the payments ecosystem.
State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and IDFC Bank have filed a petition against the notice, in a last-ditch attempt by the banking system to keep the information confidential. The notice was given to the lenders under Section 11(1) of the RTI Act, seeking third-party disclosure requirements. While the apex court's original directive in 2015 applied to the full report, it was subsequently agreed that not the entire report but only relevant portions, such as those on bad debts and borrowers, would be made public.
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