Public Sector Banks are more strained than ever before, going by the recent Indian Express exclusive which talks on the stressed assets of Public Sector Banks. Public Sector Banks (PSBs) are banks where a majority stake (i.e. more than 50%) is held by the government.

Take the following statistics:

• Public sector banks are sitting on over Rs 7 Lakh crore stressed assets.

• Bad loans written off by them between 2004 and 2015 amount to more than Rs 2.11 lakh crore. More than half such loans (Rs 1,14,182 crore) have been waived off between 2013 and 2015.

• Bank-wise break-up shows State Bank of India, India’s largest bank, is way ahead of others in declaring loans as unrecoverable, with its bad debts shooting up almost four times since 2013 — from Rs 5,594 crore in 2013 to Rs 21,313 crore in 2015. In fact, SBI’s bad debts made up 40 per cent of the total amount written off by all banks in 2015 and were more than what 20 other banks wrote off.

The Public Sector Banks have been suffering due to many reasons but some of the important reasons includes:

1.) Lack of Accountability – The decision making board contains representatives of the government and the banks among other stake holders. The decisions are taken arbitrarily without any accountability for the bad decisions taken. Take for instance King Fisher Airlines, SBI who had the biggest exposure among the public sector banks could recover only Rs 155 crore out of the Rs 1,623 crore. The money lost is the money deposited by individuals in SBI among others. There are many other examples where banks have lost money hastily with no one held accountable.

2.) Collusion – A CBI investigation into the Kingfisher debt revealed IDBI had extended loans up to 700 crores despite board members warning them otherwise. Besides IDBI, many of the banks have reached a dead end, total of 7,000 crores have vanished to thin air with no body being held accountable for the same.

What is evident from the above Kingfisher example is that the people who are availing the debts simply wash their hands off besides pocketing a handful from the loans taken themselves. The Banks do their best to recover a part of the bad debt but in vain. The ultimate loss is of the depositor and the government. Since the government has majority stake in many of the banks, it becomes an obligation to re-infuse these banks with funds which in-turn are the tax payers money. What is evident is a structural siphoning off of public money with little or no accountability.

The Most Generous :

The Logical Indian thanks The Indian Express for filing RTI and bringing this information to the public sphere. The Logical Indian is appalled by the spike in NPA (Non Performing assets) and bad debts of the public sector banks. We appeal to the government to make the public sector banks structurally incorruptible and accountable. We appeal to the RBI to set up an investigative body to look into all the bad loans and bring to books the people who had colluded for their own benefits at the cost of public money.

http://thelogicalindian.com/news/the-great-indian-circus-rs-1-14-lakh-crore-of-bad-debts-written-off-using-public-money/

Despite directions from RBI, banks refuse to share details of the entity sending money through NEFT

The National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT), used by almost everyone to transfer money quickly, can also put the receiver in a difficult position. The main reason is, there are no details available about the remitter or sender and if the amount is large, then the recipient may end up facing Income Tax (I-T) Department queries. Remember what happened with Aishwarya Rai, when in 2006 she received a parcel containing 23,000 euros (around Rs14 lakh at that time) sent by an unknown person from the Netherlands?

Well, with banks hesitating in sharing details of the person or entity who is transferring money via NEFT, it may be you next time. Although the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed banks to furnish appropriate details in passbook or account statement for credits sent and received by the customer through NEFT, all the recipient gets is just a name and amount. “A very generic mention as ‘NEFT’ or ‘NECS’ does not help customers in identifying the source of credits, particularly where multiple credits are afforded to their accounts through these products. The Core Banking Solutions (CBS) of banks should be enabled to capture complete information from the relevant fields in the messages, data files which can be displayed to customers when they access their accounts online or provided to them additionally when they approach the branch counters, help desks, call centres,” the RBI had said.

However, all the recipient gets to know is just a name. There are no details like sender’s PAN number, address and the cause/remark for the money transfer.

Often money launderers are found using bank accounts of low-income individuals for transferring money. In addition, due to the forceful implementation of the Jan Dhan Yojana, we have about 10 crore new bank accounts, out of which 73% do not have a single penny. But consider that tomorrow, if somebody uses these accounts to launder money, then without detailed information about the remitter, how is a poor Kalawati supposed to answer queries from the authorities, including but not limited to I-T department. In the absence of detailed information about the remitter, how will she explain the unaccounted money remitted into her account through NEFT?

Receiving funds from unknown remitters becomes an even bigger issue for non-governmental organisations (NGO), who need to give a receipt as well as I-T exemption certificate. If there is just a name of the remitter, how and where is an NGO, like Moneylife Foundation, supposed to send the receipt?

Another issue with NEFT fund transfer is the delay. According to RBI policy, banks need to afford credits to beneficiary accounts or return transactions (uncredited for whatever reason) to the originating / sponsor bank within the prescribed timeline. It also directed banks to move towards hourly settlement starting from 9am to 7pm on all week days and between 9am to 1pm on Saturdays. Yet, it appears that banks are still using the last part of the work-day or first hour of the next day for NEFT transactions.

Coming back to the Aishwarya Rai episode, the actor was grilled by the Customs official for two-and-a-half hours at the international airport as soon as she landed in Mumbai from Jodhpur. The parcel was allegedly sent by one Avineshwar from the Netherlands marked to the actress. It arrived at the Foreign Post Office in Mumbai during September 2006. Besides the currency, it also contained a top-brand shirt, a pair of binoculars, a DVD player and other electronic items. Following a notice, Aishwarya’s father Krishnaraj Rai, on 15th November met Custom officials to clarify her position. However, the officials insisted to know details from Aishwarya, due to which the actor had to come to Mumbai to clarify her position. She was shooting for the movie ‘Jodha Akbar’ in Jodhpur at that time. After the enquiry, she was give a temporary clean chit by the Customs.

Therefore, it is high time the central bank issues another order mandating banks to share all details of the remitter who is sending money through NEFT or any other payment method to the recipient and actually penalises banks if there are persistent complaints about flouting the RBI’s order.

Courtesy : MoneyLife Foundation

http://www.moneylife.in/article/receiving-money-through-neft-can-put-you-in-trouble/40102.html

Bank on the go even without an internet connection on your mobile phone. Presenting the new USSD (*99#) service, through this, you can check your:

To know more, click here

Please note: the USSD service is not restricted to Kotak Bank alone. All accounts of different banks linked to your registered mobile number can be checked through this service using the bank’s IFSC. The USSD service works only on GSM mobile phones and with select telecom operators. Kotak Mahindra Bank does not charge any fees for this service. However, call charges as applicable may be levied by telecom operators.

While the banks have considerably benefitted from the introduction of CBS, the customers of banks have yet to reap the benefits

How banks have benefitted from introducing the core banking solution -CBS?

With the introduction of CBS, the cost of servicing customers went down considerably for banks, besides helping them to improve their capability to service a large number of accountswith minimum cost as evidenced by the following facts and figures.

Table: 1- Growth of business of all scheduled commercial banks (SCBs) and their employee position for fifteen years from 1983 to 1998 (before introduction of CBS)

As stated in the tables above, while the business of banks grew exponentially, the number of employees went up marginally, thereby saving them huge manpower expenses with attendant benefits of lower capital cost on infrastructure. The banks, however, needed to invest onhardware and software on a regular basis, but this was much less compared to the total savings in work force cost on a continuous basis year after year.
On the other hand, customer service started deteriorating slowly, and the biggest casualty of CBS is the personal relationship between banker and customer. For every hiccup in service quality, banks started blaming computers and expressed helplessness in servicing customers across the counters.

Click Here for the full story at MoneyLife

What bankers get from charging for ATM use is peanuts compared to what they are losing in NPAs

A day before this announcement by the PM, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced certain changes to the ATM facility offered to bank customers and the charges levied for withdrawals through ATMs with effect from 1 November, 2014.
What are the changes introduced by RBI for ATM withdrawals?
The present rules for ATM withdrawals are as under:
1. At present every ATM card holder could withdraw cash from the same bank’s ATM any number of times free of all charges. For example, if you have an account with State Bank of India (SBI), you could withdraw cash or do any other non-cash transactions from ATMs of SBI any number of times in a month with out any charges.
2. Secondly, at present, you can transact or withdraw cash from other banks’ ATMs also, but only five times a month without any charges. For withdrawals beyond five times in a month, you are being charged Rs.20/- plus service tax for every such withdrawal.
3. These rules are applicable even for non-financial transactions, like using the ATMs forbalance enquiry and seeking details of last five transactions in your account. In short, usage, for any purpose, of ATMs of your own bank where you maintain your account is totally free, but you can use other banks’ ATMs also for  maximum of five times in a month without any charges.

Click Here for the detailed story from MoneyLife