As per the proposal, the banking sector deposits which have not been claimed for 10 years or more will be transfered to 'Depositor Education and Awareness Fund Scheme'.
Given that a sizeable part of this money is part of the coveted current accounts and savings accounts, it is surprising that banks are not in a hurry to revive these accounts, notes Tamal Bandyopdhyay.
Beginning next month, a bank customer can opt for up to four nominees in her or his account with a view to ensure uniformity, and efficiency in claim settlement across the banking system. The key provisions relating to Nomination under the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025 will come into effect from November 1, 2025, a finance ministry statement said on Thursday.
The size of Reserve Bank's balance sheet increased by 11.08 per cent to Rs 70.47 lakh crore as on March 2024, leading to the highest-ever dividend payout to the government, according to the central bank's annual report. In actual terms, the increase was Rs 7,02,946.97 crore over Rs 63.45 lakh crore as on March 2023.
The Reserve Bank on Monday said it has imposed penalties of about Rs 1 crore each on Kotak Mahindra Bank and IndusInd Bank for deficiencies in regulatory compliance. Besides, the RBI has also imposed penalties on four co-operative banks. A penalty of Rs 1.05 crore has been imposed on Kotak Mahindra Bank for contravention of certain norms related to 'The Depositor Education and Awareness Fund Scheme, 2014' and for non-compliance with the directions on 'Customer Protection - Limiting Liability of Customers in Unauthorised Electronic Banking Transactions', and 'Loans and Advances - Statutory and Other Restrictions', the banking regulator said.
Reserve Bank of India on Thursday said a centralised portal would be ready in three to four months wherein depositors and beneficiaries can access details of unclaimed deposits across various banks. As of February this year, about Rs 35,000 crore of unclaimed deposits were transferred to RBI by public sector banks in respect of deposits which were not operated for 10 years or more. "In order to improve and widen the access of depositors/beneficiaries to such data, RBI has decided to develop a web portal to enable search across multiple banks for possible unclaimed deposits based on user inputs," RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said while announcing the first bi-monthly monetary policy for the current financial year.
Better protection for depositors and investors was one of the chief considerations in Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introducing, on Friday, the Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2024, in the Lok Sabha to amend four pieces of legislation. This amendment is also to improve audit quality in public-sector banks (PSBs), offer consistency in reporting by banks to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and provide for an increase in the tenure of directors in cooperative banks.
As much as Rs 26,697 crore was lying in dormant accounts of banks, including cooperative banks, as on December 31, 2020, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. This money is lying in nearly 9 crore accounts which have not been operated for 10 years. As per information received from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as on December 31, 2020, the total number of such accounts in Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) was 8,13,34,849 and the amount of deposits in such accounts was Rs 24,356 crore, Sitharaman said in a reply.
With the widespread use of new technologies, inter-connectedness and dependency, newer risks, threats and vulnerabilities have emerged.
In a bid to help people who have unclaimed deposits lying with banks, the Reserve Bank of India on Monday directed banks to prominently display such account holders' names on the websites and provide them with a "Find" option to locate the information easily.
Bad loans in public sector banks more than tripled.
Nirmala Sitharaman said in Lok Sabha that in case of medical emergencies, marriages and other crisis situations, a depositor of the Maharashtra-based PMC Bank can withdraw up to Rs 1 lakh by invoking the 'hardship provisions' of the RBI.
Why did the company zero in on RBL Bank to understand the business of banking? While the M&M investors heaved a sigh of relief, one gentleman must have been all smiles after this, RBL Bank MD and CEO R Subramaniakumar, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
"You can download mobile applications provided by banks on your phones and I want to urge political leaders, teachers, youth to give training to people on mobile banking," Modi said.
Observing that the economic recovery was not yet fully entrenched, the RBI Governor said recovery is likely to be gradual.
The Reserve Bank of India has told banks not to levy penal charges for non-maintenance of minimum balances in any inoperative account.
Following the 30-day moratorium placed on Yes Bank, asset management companies have asked their clients, who have bank accounts with the troubled lender, to furnish details of alternate accounts for receiving redemption payouts. Redemption is the return of an investor's principal on a fixed income security such as a bond, mutual fund or preferred stock.
The crisis in Indian banking has now reached a point where the NPAs of many public-sector banks are higher than their net worth
The best possible move would be for the government to spend the funds on activities like infrastructure development or as it deems fit, says Soumya Kanti Ghosh.
The continuing fiscal stimulus is heavily tilted towards capex, to the extent that it chips away a part of revenue spending. Accounting for other areas of revenue expenditure, such as salaries, pensions, subsidies and defence (committed spend), the room to spend on welfare schemes, health and education will narrow in FY22.
'In most schemes, where the monthly investment is a fixed amount, investors run the risk of the price of gold rising during the tenure of the recurring deposit,' notes Harsh Roongta.
'Of the 202 debates, 79 were around attacking Pakistan and 66 attacking the Opposition and Nehru.' 'The PMC Bank scam where thousands of depositors lost their savings got just one,' points out Vanita Kohli-Khandekar.
The bank was worth over Rs 80,000 crore as recently as September 2017. The lender had grown at breakneck speed, helped perhaps by Rana Kapoor's reputation as a banker, willing to aggressively write checks.
Amid slowdown blues, the government has unveiled a raft of measures over the past few months aimed at improving liquidity in the system, moderating interest rates as well as credit growth apart from addressing stress in the NBFC sector.
Chirag Mehta, senior fund manager -- alternative investments at Quantum AMC, shares his views.
In an affidavit filed by Union finance ministry on behalf of the Union of India, it said that the relief to all borrowers in respect of compounding of interest during the period of moratorium would be admissible to the categories specified irrespective of whether the borrowers had availed the moratorium or not.
How much will the banks' bad assets grow in March? It could be anywhere between Rs 1.2 trillion and Rs 2 trillion, observes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Senior bankers are trying to impress upon the central bank that the shift to external benchmark-linked lending be postponed to April 1, 2020.
'Common sense says if one can afford, servicing the loans during this period is a better bet than postponing it by three months,' says Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Private banks are assumed to be more efficient at intermediating between depositors and investors.
Sahara chief Subrata Roy may not come out clean in the biggest ever investment fraud that he allegedly did few years ago.
EPF is the major vehicle for the long-term savings of organised private sector employees.
The website has the address and contact numbers and email IDs of 69 branch offices of Saradha Group spread across West Bengal, Tripura, Odisha, Assam and New Delhi.
As all regulators are part of it, individuals don't need to worry about approaching the right authority
'The middle class you can hurt anytime. For revenues, politics, pleasure, anything,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
The amount saved in a PPF account is actually saving for a rainy day.
God forbid, if bad days fall upon someone and debts pile up. A fascinating excerpt from Anil Lamba's Financial Affairs Of The Common Man: Master The Art Of Personal Finance Management.
While some are relatively new in this business, Vodafone, which has 1.8 million touch points in the country, has been offering basic banking and payment services through its pre-paid mobile digital semi-closed wallet called M-Pesa since 2012.
Investors and EOW waded through a maze of legal obstacles to get their hands on the 'kingpin'.
'If 99.99 per cent of these micro borrowers are good at repaying their loans, why can't we look at the SMEs and MSMEs and replicate the same model for them with our stringent risk management system,' Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, chairman and managing director of India's newest private sector bank, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
Indian economy about to take-off