The National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday granted approval to Paytm-owner One97 Communications Ltd to participate in UPI as a Third-Party Application Provider (TPAP) under the multi-bank model. Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, State Bank of India, and YES Bank will act as Payment System Provider (PSP) banks to Paytm.
Cracking down on repeated non-compliance of IT norms, the RBI on Wednesday barred Kotak Mahindra Bank from onboarding new customers through its online and mobile banking channels and issuing fresh credit cards with immediate effect after the regulator found "serious deficiencies" in the lender's IT risk management. These actions, the RBI said, are necessitated based on significant concerns arising out of Reserve Bank's IT examination of the bank for the years 2022 and 2023 and the continued failure on part of the bank to address these concerns in a comprehensive and timely manner.
rediffGURU Ulhas Joshi answers your mutual fund queries.
Of the top 10 valued firms, eight including Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), HDFC Bank, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, HDFC and ITC witnessed gains in their market valuation. From the top-10 pack, the valuation of HDFC Bank jumped Rs 31,553.45 crore to Rs 929,752.54 crore.
Bankers said the outlook of M&As in India in 2024, especially in the second half after the Lok Sabha election, seems relatively better.
rediffGURU Dev Ashish answers your personal finance and mutual fund queries.
Despite the uncertainties created by rising bond yields and oil prices, fund managers have been proactively deploying fresh flows into the equity market. The cash available with equity fund managers, which has remained lower at around 5 per cent in the past few months, hit a 16-month low of 4.8 per cent in September, shows a Motilal Oswal Financial Services report. Cash holdings in equity schemes had topped 6 per cent in February amid subdued equity market sentiment.
rediffGURU and financial planning expert Colonel Sanjeev Govila (retd) answers your personal finance-related questions.
Shares of most European banks are down significantly.
Operating margins have been the primary driver of corporate earnings in India in recent quarters, despite revenue growth suffering from weak consumer demand. Companies across sectors have reported a sharp improvement in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (Ebitda) margins over the past two years, benefiting from lower commodity and energy prices. Higher margins more than compensated for slower revenue growth, resulting in double-digit growth in net profit for five consecutive quarters.
After ICICI bank, the largest mortgage lender HDFC has also decided to discontinue the teaser rate scheme that entail cheaper home loans to new borrowers.
HDFC Bank met forecasts with a 30 per cent rise in quarterly profit led by higher loan growth, fee income and stable asset quality.
'This segment has performed very well for us and this is reflected in our bounce rate which is about three to four per cent.'
rediffGURU Ramalingam Kalirajan answers your personal finance queries.
The number of dematerialised (demat) accounts - required to hold shares and other securities in electronics format - crossed the 150-million mark for the first time in March. In March, 3.12 million new demat accounts were added despite a spike in market volatility, taking the total count to 151.4 million. The milestone has come 19 months after the total number of demat accounts hit the 100-million mark, a sign that more domestic households are taking to direct equity investing.
The card offers special features like multiple reward points, weekend bonanza points, petrol surcharge waiver and 500 special gift reward points to be credited annually on the Teachers day, HDFC Bank said in a statement.
Cumulative FII holdings in the company rose to 77.85 per cent in the July-September quarter this year from 73.09 per cent in three months ended September last year, according to data from stock exchanges.
The value of FPIs (Foreign Portfolio Investors) holding in Indian equities reached $738 billion in the three months ended December 2023, marking a surge of 13 per cent from the preceding quarter, driven by the strong performance of the domestic stock market, according to a report by Morningstar. The value of FPIs investment was at $651 billion in the September quarter of the current fiscal. On a year-on-year basis, the value of such investments rose 26 per cent from $584 billion in December 2022.
Brokerage says earnings inflated, but mortgage lender rubbishes charges.
In the Sensex pack, HCLTech rose the maximum by 3.12 per cent, followed by ITC which gained 2.73 per cent and M&M went up 2.61 per cent. TCS climbed 2.44 per cent. Tech Mahindra, Wipro, L&T and Maruti were among the other major gainers.
Reliance Industries was the biggest gainer in the Sensex pack, rising 2.69 per cent, followed by HCL Tech, ICICI Bank, Tata Motors, Wipro, IndusInd Bank, JSW Steel, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services and Titan. In contrast, NTPC, Power Grid, UltraTech Cement, Axis Bank, Infosys and Nestle were the major laggards.
The FIPB on Friday cleared the long-pending proposal of HDFC Bank to hike foreign holding in the bank to 74 per cent.
rediffGURU Sunil Lala answers your personal finance-related queries.
It has been decided to reduce home loan rate by 20 basis points.
Brokerages have lowered the price targets of asset management companies (AMCs) since they failed to beat revenue growth expectations in the January-March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4) of 2022-23 (FY23). The regulator's plans to lower the fee charged by AMCs also added to concerns. While HDFC AMC and Nippon Life India AMC reported modest growth in revenue from operations in Q4FY23, UTI AMC and Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC delivered yet another weak quarter.
Re-rating of Axis Bank's stock may continue in the near-future, believe analysts, as the risk-reward on the stock remains favourable amid healthy financials. The bullish stance comes after the Mumbai-based lender delivered a strong outperformance in the March quarter of fiscal year 2023-24 (Q4FY24) on core pre-provision profit and net profit, with improving asset quality. Axis Bank's net interest margin (NIM) expanded, against expectations, even in a tough market.
The country's largest private lender HDFC Bank's bad-loan write-offs doubled to Rs 3,100 crore in the April-June quarter (first quarter, or Q1) of 2021-22 (FY22), from the level of Rs 1,500 crore in the same quarter of 2020-21 (Q1FY21). It also offloaded its non-performing assets (NPAs) amounting to Rs 1,800 crore in Q1FY22 to maintain a robust asset quality profile. It had jettisoned NPAs worth Rs 1,000 crore in the last quarter. Lenders knock off stress assets from books after making full provisions. Their right to recover dues from delinquent borrowers remains intact after the write-downs.
HDFC has reduced interest rates for individual deposits by 0.25 per cent across the board with effect from December 10.
Following are comments from economists at leading financial institutions, banks and rating agencies on the interim Budget:
The country's largest home loan player HDFC on Wednesday said that it may have to raise lending rates further if the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) increases key policy rates in the forthcoming monetary policy review on July 29. HDFC has been arguing that the effective borrowing cost is a little over 5 per cent if the tax benefits are included.
'We are working with a few housing finance companies to drive affordable lending because that's where we believe our sweet spot is.'
For the financial year 2011, profit after tax of Reliance MF stood at Rs 261 crore (Rs 2.61 billion), while that of HDFC MF was Rs 242 crore (Rs 2.42 billion).
Eight of the 10 most valued firms faced a combined erosion of Rs 1,17,493.78 crore in market valuation in an overall weak trend in equities last week, with Infosys taking the biggest hit. Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank were among the eight companies that suffered a decline in their valuation. ITC and State Bank of India were the only gainers. Last week, the 30-share BSE Sensex fell by 775.94 points or 1.28 per cent.
Public sector banks have lowered both deposit and lending rates, while almost all private and foreign banks have stayed away from rate cuts despite the Reserve Bank of India reducing key rates. HDFC Bank has become the first private sector lender to reduce deposit rates, while other private sector banks said they would also jump on the bandwagon over the next few weeks.
The country's six largest smallcap schemes would require more than 20 days to liquidate half of their holdings, despite most of them maintaining high cash levels and having considerable exposure to more liquid largecap stocks, stress tests conducted by fund houses reveal. For midcap funds, the time required to sell half of the assets of the top six schemes varies between seven and 34 days, according to disclosures made by asset management companies. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had called for such tests in the face of strong inflows into smallcap and midcap funds, despite concerns over high valuations, to keep investors better informed.
HDFC Bank on Friday announced a marketing alliance with American Express enabling the former to offer American Express Travellers cheques to consumers at over 160 of its branches across 70 cities.
Investors' wealth grew by Rs 3.24 lakh crore on Thursday as the BSE Sensex jumped nearly 1 per cent after a two-day slide. The 30-share BSE Sensex jumped 490.97 points or 0.69 per cent to settle at 71,847.57. During the day, it rallied 598.19 points or 0.83 per cent to 71,954.79.
At end of week, Infosys had a market valuation of Rs 2,69,489 cr, or Rs 432.68 cr more than HDFC Bank's Rs 2,69,056 cr
In its 59-page order, the capital markets regulator Sebi said that the 10-year restraint period for them would be calculated after taking into account the restraint already undergone by him vide an interim order dated June 17, 2010.