Now, use Facebook for your financial transactions

Banks and stock broking firms are beginning to carry out business on Facebook, an important step as they try to build deeper customer relationships through social media platforms. With nearly 45 million users in India and growing rapidly, Facebook's popularity is making banks test the waters with a few basic services to discover how comfortable customers are carrying out transactions on the social networking site. ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, is one of the early movers. Its application lets customers check the balance in accounts;...

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Citigroup taps Michael O'Neill to replace chairman Richard Parsons

Citigroup on Friday named Michael O'Neill as its chairman, succeeding Richard Parsons who is not seeking reelection after helping guide the major US bank through the global financial crisis. O'Neill, who headed the Bank of Hawaii from 2000 to 2004, is a Citi board member. Parsons, chairman since 2009, will remain in his post through the April 17 annual meeting of stockholders, Citigroup said in a statement. His departure, after 16 years on the board, marks the end of a tumultuous era at Citigroup, which took a $45 billion taxpayer rescue to survive...

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IDBI Bank to raise Rs 5,294 crore from share sale

State-owned IDBI Bank said it would raise up to Rs 5,294 crore from various means, including share sale to government and LIC. The board of the bank in its meeting today fixed issue price of Rs 112.99 per share for preferential issue of shares, IDBI Bank said in a statement. The board has proposed to issue 18.85 crore equity shares of Rs 10 each at a price of Rs 112.99 per share aggregating to Rs 2,130.50 crore upon conversion of Tier I Bonds held by the government of India in the bank into equity, it said. At the same time, it said, the bank would...

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Corp Bank opens zonal office at Vadodara

Corporation Bank inaugurated its new zonal office at Vadodara and opened a senior citizens' lounge and special gold loan counter at Alkapuri branch in Vadodara on Friday. A bank release said here the Vadodara zonal office controls the bank's operations with 33 branches and 20 ATMs. It said the senior citizens' lounge is an air-conditioned sitting area for the convenience of elders. A special officer has been deputed to take care of the entire banking needs of them like cash payments, passbook updation and pension payments . A free annual basic...

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ICICI Bank to levy charge on mobile fund transfers

Leading private sector bank ICICI Bank will charge its customers Rs 5 per transaction from next month for transfer of funds over mobile phones, a service available for free as of now. The fee for inter-bank transfer of funds would be levied from April 1, along with a slew of revisions in the bank’s various service charges. Its peer HDFC Bank has already revised service charges with effect from January 1, when it also introduced charges for a few services. Banking industry experts said that a few other private sector banks could also soon revise...

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LIC to pay claims in South via funds transfer system

The settling of LIC’s claims through the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system across four States in South India will take off in April, a senior official said. The move is aimed at reducing the use of cheques in settling claims to avoid delays due to their getting lost or damaged, said LIC Zonal Manager, Mr D. D. Singh. “We are going live from April. Almost all the 13 divisions of LIC are ready to offer the service (from April onwards),” Mr Singh told PTI. Earlier, LIC undertook this proposal as a pilot study in Kochi (in Kerala) and...

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New GM for Karnataka Bank

Dr Meera Laetitia B. Aranha, Deputy General Manager and Chief Compliance Officer of Karnataka Bank Ltd, has been promoted as General Manager with effect from March 1. A bank release said here on Thursday that Dr Aranha joined the bank in 1987 as Manager. As General Manager, she will be in-charge of Large and Corporate Finance Division at the Head Office, the release added....

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Stick to tried and proven ATMs

A large number of the fraudulent ATM withdrawals that take place occur while the card is still in your possession. Somehow, somewhere, fraudsters get hold of the information contained in the magnetic strip at the back of your card together with your PIN. Typically this happens, without your knowledge, at a tampered ATM. Beating the system In the course of one particular series of fraudulent transactions, a person, with his face covered, came in with multiple cards and made repeated withdrawals of Rs 20,000 in successive transactions. In the absence...

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IRDA nominates members for Health Insurance Forum

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has nominated Mr M. Rama Prasad, Member (Non-Life), as the Chairman of the Health Insurance Forum. The chairman and managing directors of Life Insurance Corporation of India, New India Assurance Company, Star Health and Allied Insurance Company, Chairman of General Insurance Public Sector Association, chief executive officers of ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company were also nominated as industry representatives. From the third-party administrators, the...

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LIC launches single premium Jeevan Vriddhi policy

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) today launched a new plan ‘Jeevan Vriddhi’, a single premium non-linked insurance plan. The plans offers risk cover of five times the premium chosen by the customer and guaranteed returns at maturity. According to an official statement, the plan offers a combination of insurance and returns, and would be available for a limited period of up to a maximum of 120 days. Among the multiple benefits offered to the customer are: Five times the single premium being offered as the risk cover, guaranteed maturity...

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Vijaya Bank cuts interest rate on loans to small units

With an additional thrust on the micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) loan portfolio, Vijaya Bank has reduced the interest rate on MSME loans by 0.25-0.75 percentage points with effect from March 1, 2012, said a press release from the bank. Apart from this, wherever the borrowers' account is rated by external credit agencies, the bank extends further reduction in the interest rate ranging from 0.25 to 1 percentage points. “MSME is a thrust area for us because it is an employment generator and also bridges the gap between the manufacturing...

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Oriental Bank to continue financing viable airlines, says new chief

Oriental Bank of Commerce will not shy away from financing viable units in the airline industry just because a few of the players have landed themselves in financial troubles. “We will not blackout the airline sector. We will continue to finance viable units. We have recently given finance to low cost carrier Indigo. If you can manage the business well, you will get our funding assistance”, Mr S. L. Bansal, who is OBC's new Chairman and Managing Director, said here today. Standard asset Mr Bansal, who assumed charge of his new assignment today,...

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SC stay on sealing of banks in Noida extended

The Supreme Court today extended till March 12 its stay on sealing of the banks operating from residential areas in NOIDA. "There will be no sealing of the banks by the NOIDA authority till March 12," a bench comprising justices Swatanter Kumar and Ranjana Prakash Desai said, while extending its earlier order of January 23. The bench, however, asked the chief managers of all the relevant banks, which are before it, to file their affidavits within a week giving details of the lease entered by the banks which are to be shifted to alternate site. The...

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Kotak Mahindra Bank implements Infosys' Finacle CBS platform

Private sector Kotak Mahindra Bank today announced migration to new Core Banking Solution ( CBS) platform Finacle 10, the latest banking product of leading IT player Infosys Technologies. The entire implementation, which replaced the bank's legacy core banking system with no disruption to business, was completed in 18 months, Kotak Mahindra Bank president K V S Manian said. The implementation of Finacle core banking and e-banking solutions was rolled out simultaneously across all the 335 bank branches of the bank. Finacle 10 was found to be the...

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Vikram Pandit excelled in hedge fund business but not Citigroup

Vikram Pandit knows one way to make big money in hedge funds: sell them. In July 2007, Pandit sold Old Lane Partners LP to Citigroup Inc for $800 million and pocketed $165 million for his stake. Then he took over the bank's in-house hedge-fund group, now called Citi Capital Advisors, or CCA. He became chief executive officer of the whole company just five months later. After the financial crisis, Citigroup closed some funds -- it won't say how many -- and investors fled others. As of mid- February, it managed $18.6 billion. The last time Citi told...

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Muthoot Finance's Rs 500-cr bond issue opens on Friday

Gold loan company Muthoot Finance today said its Rs 500-crore bond issue, the third this fiscal, will hit the markets on Friday. "We have got Sebi permission for a Rs 250 crore NCD (non-convertible debenture) issue which has a green-shoe option," Muthoot Finance Managing Director George Alexander Muthoot said here. The issue offers four different tenors - two years with a yield on 13 per cent, three years at 13.25 per cent, five years for HNIs and QIBs, with a coupon of 13.25 per cent and five and a half year tenor attracting 13.43 per cent. In...

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Moody's cuts Central Bank of India rating outlook to negative

Global rating agency Moody's today revised downward the ratings outlook for Central Bank of India to 'negative' from 'stable' on account of weak asset quality. "The revised outlook considers that Central Bank of India's comparatively modest capital level and weak asset quality will be further pressured in the current difficult operating environment," Moody's said in a statement. "We view the bank as being more vulnerable than its similarly-rated peers (D-), given its relatively riskier loan book, which includes a high proportion of loans to troubled...

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Karnataka Bank launches gift, travel cards

Karnataka Bank Ltd has launched two more products aimed at gift and travel segments. A bank release said here that it has launched ‘KBL Gift Card' and ‘KBL Travel Card'. Ms Usha Thorat, former Deputy Governor of the RBI and Director for CAFRAL (Centre for Advanced Financial Research and Learning), launched these new products in Mangalore recently. The release said that the ‘KBL Gift Card' is available in denominations starting from Rs 500 to Rs 25,000. ‘KBL Travel Card' is available in nine currencies. This card is accepted worldwide at over 1.6...

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M. G. Sanghvi is new CMD of Syndicate Bank

Mr Madhukant Girdharlal Sanghvi will be the Chairman and Managing Director of Syndicate Bank effective March 1, after the superannuation of Mr Basant Seth. Prior to this appointment, Mr Sanghvi was the Executive Director, Bank of Maharashtra. He has over 31 years of experience in various fields of banking, including branch/regional/zonal resources management, credit, treasury, planning, risk management, finance and accounts. He began his banking career in Bank of Baroda in 1980, and later joined Dena Bank. He became a General Manager in Dena Bank...

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Union Bank may soon cut interest rates on retail loans

Union Bank of India will reduce interest rates on home and education loans next month if its net interest margins (NIM) remains strong, Mr M.V.Nair, Chairman and Managing Director of the bank said. The bank would take a call on reducing interest rates on the retail side (such as home and education loans) after the NIM data for February is available, he told newspersons here. Mr Nair's remarks come close on the heels of State Bank of India's move to reduce education loan rates by 1 percentage point. Union Bank's NIM in end December was 3.3 per cent....

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Allahabad Bank to roll out 5,000 POS terminals

Allahabad Bank has tied up with Tata Communications Banking InfraSolutions Ltd for providing merchant acquiring services through Point of Sale (POS) terminals. POS terminals are swipe machines for registering payments through credit and debit cards. Under this tie-up, the bank plans to roll out 2,000 POS terminals in the first phase and another 3,000 terminals in the second phase thereby taking the total number to 5,000 by the end of this fiscal, according to its Chairman and Managing Director, Mr J. P. Dua. According to RBI data, there are over...

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Mixed response for nation-wide strike, banking, transport hit

A nation-wide 24-hour strike called by 11 major trade unions today evoked a mixed response disrupting public sector banking operations and transport services in some states but normal life remained largely unaffected. The strike in protest against the government's "anti-labour policies" was by and large peaceful with no major incidents of violence being reported. Air services remained normal while train services were disrupted in some divisions of Eastern Railways and South Eastern Railways due to picketing by protesters. Life in major cities,...

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Kotak Securities makes trading account opening easy and fast

Gone are the days when one had to struggle for weeks to open a trading account, with Kotak Securities launching a product that makes the entire process easy and fast. India's leading brokerage firm today introduced 'My Box', a ready-to-trade box that allows customer to open a trading account instantly. "Now opening a broking account is as easy as buying a book off the shelf of a retail store. 'My Box' allows customer to open a trading account instantly," Kotak Securities Executive Vice-President & Head of Broking B Gopkumar told reporters here. The...

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Bank strike today; normal services may get affected

Operations in public sector banks may be hit on Tuesday as employee unions will observe a day-long strike opposing outsourcing of non-core activities to the private sector among other things. The strike by bank employees is a part of the one-day all-India general strike, called by major central trade unions. Seven insurance unions, representing public sector life and general insurance sectors, have also extended support to the strike call. However, large private sector lenders like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank and foreign banks are expected...

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SKS securitises loans worth Rs 354 cr

SKS Microfinance, the country’s only listed micro lender, today said it has securitised Rs 354 crore of receivables from 18 States, except Andhra Pradesh. The securitisation was done by a major public sector bank, SKS said in a statement, without naming the lender. SKS shares were up 1.64 per cent at Rs 130.40 on the BSE in late morning trade. Under the pool securitisation, bundling micro loans made to borrowers like micro-entrepreneurs are sold to investors such as banks to raise funds. The microfinance company has already drawn down the first...

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Karnataka banks achieve 90% of priority sector credit target

Banks in Karnataka have achieved 90 per cent of their priority sector credit target for the fiscal up to December 2011, the chairman of the State-level bankers' committee said at the 120th SLBC – Karnataka meeting here on Monday. Mr Basant Seth, also the chairman and managing director of Syndicate Bank, said in a press release that banks have disbursed Rs 41,412 crore under Priority Sector Credit up to December 2011 against the revised annual target of Rs 46,027 crore, thereby recording an achievement level of 90 per cent. Under the agriculture...

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HSBC India profit up 20% on strong growth in commercial biz

HSBC's India operations reported a profit before tax of $813 million for the year ended 2011 — 20 per cent higher than the $679 million in the previous year. The growth in profit was on account of the improved performance of the retail banking segment where losses declined substantially and strong growth in commercial banking, said Mr Stuart Davis, Chief Executive Officer, India, HSBC. Decline in losses The losses in retail banking and wealth management declined to $14 million as on end-December 2011, from a loss of $83 million in 2010. Commercial...

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Indian Bank to set up three more branches in Sri Lanka: Bhasin

Indian Bank has applied to the Reserve Bank of India to open three more branches in Sri Lanka. The bank plans to open a branch each in Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Hambantota, it's Chairman and Managing Director, Mr T. M. Bhasin, said. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has already given the green signal for these branches, he said after inaugurating a specialised SME branch here on Monday. This is the first SME branch opened by Indian Bank in the Capital. Indian Bank had opened its second branch in Sri Lanka in Jaffna in January last year. The other...

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