The Reserve Bank on Thursday said it will come out with a framework allowing borrowers to switch to fixed interest rate from floating interest rate, a move that would provide relief to borrowers of home, auto and other loans reeling under the impact of high interest rate. Unveiling the bi-monthly monetary policy, Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das said under the framework, to be put in place shortly, the lenders will have to clearly communicate with the borrowers about tenor and EMI. "The supervisory reviews undertaken by the Reserve Bank and the feedback and references from members of public have revealed several instances of unreasonable elongation of tenor of floating rate loans by lenders without proper consent and communication to the borrowers," he said.
The banking regulator was uncomfortable with the runaway pace at which consumer credit was growing.
Shares of Bajaj Finance sprinted 4.7 per cent to Rs 7,732 per share on the BSE in Thursday's (January 4) intra-day trade as the non-bank finance company's (NBFC's) December quarter business update reflected minimal impact of the Reserve Bank of India's ban on two of its lending products. The shares, eventually, ended 4.4 per cent higher at Rs 7,710 per share as against 0.69 per cent gain in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex. The NBFC's asset under management (AUM) topped the Rs 3-trillion-mark at the end of December 2023, swelling by roughly Rs 20,700 crore (35 per cent year-on-year) to hit Rs 3.11 trillion-mark.
RBI may also be open to injecting liquidity through open market purchases of bonds but is resisting relaxing capital buffers for banks.
Concerned over the practice of banks and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) using penal interest as a revenue enhancement tool, the Reserve Bank on Friday came out with modified norms, under which lenders would be able to levy only "reasonable" penal charges in case of default in repayment of loans. The banks and other lending institutions will not be allowed to levy penal interest with effect from January 1, 2024, the RBI said in its notification on 'Fair Lending Practice-Penal Charges in Loan Accounts'. "Penalty, if charged, for non-compliance of material terms and conditions of loan contract by the borrower shall be treated as 'penal charges' and shall not be levied in the form of 'penal interest' that is added to the rate of interest charged on the advances," RBI said in a notification.
The bulk of an investor's portfolio should be in shorter-duration funds of up to one year portfolio duration.
The challenge for the RBI in 2024 is likely to be less about containing elevated inflation and more about curbing excessive financial market exuberance and a 'problem of plenty', notes Sajjid Chinoy, Chief India Economist JP Morgan.
People are availing far more of certain kinds of unsecured loans than was the case before the pandemic. Bank lending for buying consumer durables and funding of credit cards and other personal loans have risen by Rs 6.9 trillion between August 2019 and August 2023, shows a Business Standard analysis of data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). These loans are typically unsecured, which means they are provided without collateral.
Understand the pros and cons of SGBs before rushing to invest in them based on past returns.
Despite gold prices hitting record highs, analysts aren't gung-ho about the outlook for gold financiers Muthoot Finance and Manappuram Finance. This, they said, was due to intense competition from banks, coupled with stagnating loan books and likely pressure on margins.
On November 12, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) decided to ring in uniformity in asset classification and income recognition across all lending institutions. Shadow banks, or non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), like commercial banks, are to test non-performing assets (NPAs) on a daily basis and upgrade them to "standard assets" only when interest and principal arrears are settled by borrowers. This is going to create all manner of headaches for shadow banks and their clientele. Says Y S Chakravarti, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO), Shriram City Union Finance: "NPA levels will go up, especially of small borrowers.
The second quarter results of banks show that net profits for the industry increased 57 per cent annually. The private sector banks recorded a 64 per cent rise in profits, whereas the net profits of public sector banks jumped 50 per cent in this period. A significant portion of this increase can be attributed to the rise in credit costs and a decline in non-performing assets (NPAs).
Education finance is a complex and dynamic sector. There are too many variables -- the course, the calibre of students, the universities, and the job prospects once the course is over, notes Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
rediffGURU and financial planning expert Colonel Sanjeev Govila (retd) answers your personal finance-related questions.
Highly-rated finance firms and housing finance companies are expected to benefit from the absence of Housing Development Finance Corp (HDFC) from the bond market once it merges with the HDFC Bank in early FY24. Post merger, the bond market is expected to become less crowded, which will ease fund raising conditions for other players in the field. It may perhaps also compress the spread for debt instruments floated by housing finance companies (HFCs) over 10-year government bonds, subject to demand and supply conditions.
'The focus needs to shift towards the ability to collect payments, particularly in tier-3 to tier-4 areas where acceptance is still lacking.'
Manappuram declared consolidated assets under management (AUM) growth of 27 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) (5.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter or Q-o-Q) to Rs 38,950 crore. Net interest income (NII) saw a margin expansion of 24 basis points (bps) Q-o-Q to 15.44 per cent.
rediffGURU Chandu Nair advises entrepreneurs and enterprises about how to create and build their business.
The pace of lending to the infrastructure sector, including power and roads, fell sharply to 1.8 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in May, 2023 compared to 9.8 per cent in May, 2022. Within the segment, the growth in loans to the power sector was at 0.3 per cent YoY in May 2023, down from 9.3 per cent in May 2022. The RBI data showed that outstanding credit to power sector stood at Rs 6.17 trillion in May.
The average time lag between the date of occurrence of a fraud and its detection is 23 months; for large frauds (Rs 100 crore and above), it was 57 months.
The growth in personal loans for fintech major Paytm may remain muted in the future and not replicate a three-digit year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth that it recorded in the previous years, a person familiar with the matter said. Sources said the personal loans book may grow in the range of 30 to 40 per cent Y-o-Y on its current base. On a quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q) basis, the number of personal loans the Noida-based fintech company disbursed has dropped 20 per cent from 0.3 million in the first quarter of this financial year (Q1FY24) to 0.24 million in Q2FY24, according to regulatory filings.
While the RBI's guidelines aim to streamline the loan closure process, borrowers must remain proactive.
The Reserve Bank on Tuesday directed digital lending entities to disclose upfront the names of of their empanelled agents authorised to contact borrowers in case of default of loan, and also intimate the details to customers before initiating the recovery process. In August last year, the RBI had tightened norms for digital lending to prevent charging of exorbitant interest rates by certain entities and also check unethical loan recovery practices. Under the new norms, all loan disbursals and repayments are required to be executed only between the bank accounts of borrower and the regulated entities (like banks and NBFCs) without any pass-through/ pool account of the Lending Service Providers (LSPs).
Gold prices hit record high in the third week of March as fears of bank collapses and high inflation led investors to the traditional safe haven. Gold prices are often inversely correlated to dollar strength because the international price is dollar-denominated. The Federal Reserve's (Fed's) stance indicates that the dollar may appreciate further since it is prepared to keep pushing up policy rates. But demand for gold is also up - the World Gold Council claims central banks are buying in addition to private demand.
'If individual stocks start falling 25% to 30% or more, then I doubt how many of them will be able to withstand that (kind of selloff). That is when you'll see panic coming in.'
Mutual funds (MFs) are betting on a turnaround in the healthcare sector to boost returns but are divided on the prospects of the information technology (IT) sector amid uncertain growth outlook. At the end of June, all of the top 20 fund houses were overweight on the healthcare sector vis--vis the sector's presence in the BSE 200 index, shows a report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services (MOFS). In the case of the IT sector, only six of the 20 fund houses had overweight positions.
The Reserve Bank has given time till November 30 to banks and NBFCs to put in place a mechanism to ensure that existing digital loans are in compliance with the modified norms aimed at protecting the interest of customers. Last month, the central bank tightened norms for 'digital lending' to prevent charging of exorbitant interest rates by certain entities and also check unethical loan recovery practices. In a circular, the RBI said outsourcing arrangements entered by Regulated Entities (REs) with a Lending Service Provider (LSP)/ Digital Lending App (DLA) do not diminish the REs' obligations and they shall continue to conform to the extant guidelines on outsourcing.
Non-banking finance companies face renewed asset quality and liquidity risks amid a second wave of COVID-19, Fitch Ratings said on Thursday. These challenges are likely to increase if recent restrictions to contain the pandemic are expanded or prolonged, leading to greater economic and operational disruption, it added. The rating agency further said that an increase in the rate of infections and broadening of social distancing restrictions pose downside risks to its 12.8 per cent growth projection for the current fiscal.
An RBI-appointed panel on Monday recommended hosts of customer-centric initiatives for banks, including online settlement of claims by heirs of deceased account holders, flexibility for submission of life certificates by pensioners and a centralised KYC database. The report of the Committee for Review of Customer Service Standards in RBI Regulated Entities (REs) has also suggested that the operations of accounts should not be stopped pending periodic Know Your Customer (KYC) updates. It recommended that there should be a time limit for the return of property documents to borrowers after the closure of the loan account, failing which a penalty should be imposed on the lender.
'Building a credit history is a gradual process that requires at least 6-12 months of consistent credit activity.'
About 300 fintech firms are under investigation by the ED for allegedly partnering 38 non-banking financial companies for predatory lending practices to charge borrowers high interest rates.
Among the Sensex stocks, Larsen & Toubro rose the most by 3.96 per cent after the company announced a major project win in the Middle East. HDFC, HDFC Bank, Sun Pharma, ITC, HUL, Titan, TCS, HCL Tech, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Infosys and Tata Steel were among the major gainers.
Under Urjit Patel, the then RBI Governor, the central bank had a habit of making complete about-turns on various issues, including electoral bonds and digital payments, former finance secretary Subash Chandra Garg said in his book titled 'We Also Make Policy: An Insider's Account of How the Finance Ministry Functions.' Citing some instances of about-turns by the then RBI Governor Patel, Garg in his book said, RBI had done so on the electoral bond issue and it had so in case of setting up of Payments Regulatory Board (PRB). RBI also made unilateral decisions like ordering complete data localization for participation in the payment system, Garg wrote in the book which will hit the stands on October 1.
'India has formed tremendous resilience and still a strong growth.'
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday said it has arrested Karvy Stock Broking Limited (KSBL) CMD C Parthasarathy and group CFO G Krishna Hari in connection with a money laundering investigation linked to alleged diversion of clients' securities of over Rs 2,873 crore. The agency produced the two-- already lodged in central jail, Bengaluru after being arrested by the police-- before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Hyderabad on January 20 and on January 25 it remanded them to four days of ED custody from January 27-30, it said in a statement. The ED case, filed under the criminal provisions of the PMLA, is based on multiple Telangana Police FIRs filed by the HDFC Bank, few other banks and investors alleging clients' securities were illegally diverted by Karvy Stock Broking Ltd and these were later pledged with banks and non banking financial companies (NBFCs) for loans which were later "defaulted".
The Reserve Bank on Thursday asked card companies not to issue unsolicited credit cards or upgrade an existing card without the explicit consent of the customer, failing which they will have to pay double the billed amount as penalty. It also asked card issuers and third-party agents not to resort to intimidation or harassment during recovery of dues from customers. In its master directions on credit card and debit card issuance, the RBI said "the issue of unsolicited cards/upgradation is strictly prohibited".
For non-banks, the IL&FS crisis was nothing short of India's Lehman moment, which has for a foreseeable future reset the sector on multiple grounds.
'India has always been a bottom-up stock-picking market, and as growth recovers with higher liquidity, mid and small-caps always tend to outperform.'
The credit guarantee cover under the scheme would be both transaction-based (for single eligible borrowers) and umbrella-based (for a group of eligible borrowers).
You will come across many a hurdle while purchasing a used car. That, however, cannot keep you away from realising your dream.
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