South Indian Bank rides the blockchain wave to complete overseas transactions

South Indian Bank has successfully executed overseas transactions using blockchain technology in partnership with a leading currency exchange house in West Asia.

With this, SIB joins a niche group of banks in the global market to exchange and authenticate remittance transaction messages electronically on blockchain in real time. The pilot transaction was successfully executed by Forex transaction from UAE to India.

The implementation of the blockchain technology in transaction platforms conforms to the bank’s strategy to embrace emerging and latest technology for ensuring faster as well as safe transaction settlement. Besides delivering customer exuberance, this technology is simple, automated and fully secured with minimal data loss.

At present, SIB is having inward remittance tie-up with 4 banks and 34 exchange houses in all the GCC countries and in South East Asian countries such as Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. The bank has been aggressive in digital innovations and has launched it’s in-house developed mobile app SIB Mirror+, which offers secured digital e-lock for its customers that enables them to lock their accounts at their convenience.


Source : Economic Times

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Vijaya Bank to raise Rs.1,300 cr via bonds in FY18

Public sector lender Vijaya Bank said on Sunday that its board has approved raising Rs.1,300 crore via bonds in the current fiscal under the Basel III global capital adequacy norms.

”...the board has accorded its approval for raising Rs.1,300 crore by way of additional tier 1 bonds under Basel III for the financial year 2017-18 (revised additional capital requirements amounting to Rs.1,000 crore in addition to Rs.300 crore already approved by the board),” the bank said in a BSE filing.


Source : Economic Times

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South Indian Bank raises Rs.490 cr via private placement

South Indian Bank has announced the successful fund raising of Rs.490 crore by way of private placement of Basel-III compliant Tier-2 bonds.

Besides augmenting Tier-2 capital, this exercise would further strengthen the capital adequacy ratio or the capital to risk-weighted assets ratio (CRAR) position of the bank to support the targeted business growth.

The capital position of SIB as on September 30 was 11.74 per cent, which is well above the minimum required level of 10.25 per cent.

VG Mathew, MD and CEO of South Indian Bank, said: “The infusion of fresh capital would improve the CRAR by 108 basis points, which will take care of the capital requirement for the coming year at the targeted business growth of 18 per cent.


Source : Economic Times

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Corp Bank launches RuPay credit cards

Corporation Bank has launched its RuPay Select and RuPay Platinum credit cards.

A press release said here that Corporation Bank’s RuPay credit cards are accepted at all RuPay-enabled 1.5 million plus PoS terminals and 80,000 plus e-commerce merchants in India and all ICS Partner acceptance points (POS, e-commerce merchants) globally.

Jai Kumar Garg, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Corporation Bank, unveiled the cards in Mangaluru on Saturday. Gopal Murli Bhagat, Executive Director of the bank, was present during the launch.

Quoting Garg, the release said that these cards will boost digital payment and will be beneficial in creating a ‘less cash society’.

Personal accident insurance of Rs.10 lakh and Rs.2 lakh is offered on RuPay Select Credit Card and RuPay Platinum Credit Card, respectively, it said.


Source : Economic Times

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Double digit loan growth possible next year, says HDFC Bank

The banking sector has the potential to touch double-digit loan growth next year as there are signs of corporate demand picking up and other credit avenues stabilising, a top official of HDFC Bank has said.

After clocking just under 10 per cent growth for almost a year, credit expansion fell to under 5 per cent starting November 2016. Since then it has been struggling to cross the double digit mark on sustained basis due to the impact of demonetisation and the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST).

"The demand so far has been essentially driven by working capital and some short-term loans and, maybe, a little bit of brownfield capex but you have not had a meaningful private investment especially from the private sector to give a boost to corporate credit demand," Deputy Managing Director Paresh Sukthankar told .

The good news is that on the working capital side, given that commodity prices have moved up from the bottom, as volumes increase there would be higher demand for capital, he said.

"But till you have a further pick up in the capex related demand, you cannot expect reversal in the trend... It s been long time now for single digit loan growth for banking industry...when you go into next year if double digit loan growth possible? I think it is if some of these issues play out," he said.

A major portion of loan demand until a few months ago was met through commercial paper, bonds, foreign currency borrowings, while dependence on bank credit was less due to interest rate arbitrage.

Expressing hope of a pick up in the next couple of quarters, Sukthankar said, "I would still think that all of the factors have played out. I am not going suggesting that there is going to be huge capex demand, but share of the pie with others probably stabilising now...growth in corporate credit from now will move to banks," he said.


Source : Economic Times

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