1. The Institute of Finance, Banking & Insurance has set up centres in Ahmedabad and Pune and added two more in Delhi NCR, taking the total tally to 10 across the country. The institute has also extended its portfolio by partnering with three banks through which it will conduct training programme for the new and existing employees of the banks on the basics and core banking software solution.
2. TCS Financial Solutions, the strategic business unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is targeting Asia Pacific, West Asia, Africa and Latin America for its financial products suite BaNCS. It has bagged 150 deals in the financial sector, ranging from $5 million to $200 million. Twenty per cent of these are large ones, between $30 million to $200 million.The unit already supports two large banks – SBI and Bank of China. With a total of 225 customers, it has 35 live installations in fiscal 2007. Eleven new customers were added in the first quarter.
3. The inter-bank call rates rose to 6 per cent — between RBI’s signal rates of repo and reverse repo — on Monday, the first trading day after the 50 basis point hike in CRR came into effect on August 4. The call closed at 6-6.10 per cent higher than the previous close of 2- 2.25 per cent. The rates have been hovering below 1 per cent levels for the past few weeks, due to surplus cash in the system. The hike in CRR has drained the banking system of about Rs 15,000-16,000 crore. Dealers however do not anticipate the rates to go up further immediately.
4. Loan seekers would have the opportunity to interact directly with banks through a live chat to get their loan queries answered. Deal4loans.com is organising a chat session for the customers in New Delhi on August 8, where they would be able to get live quotes, compare offerings from various banks and get the EMI calculated. The portal would organise such chat sessions in other cities later. Deals4loans acts as a mediator between the loan seeker and institutions providing t he loan. Deal4loans offers all information on home loans, car loans, personal loans, loans against property and credit cards.
5. As part of its exercise to provide additional services to customers, Canara Bank will enter into a tie-up with several financial and service sector institutions including Kingfisher, Indian and Jet Airways.The tie-up will facilitate the bank’s customers to book air-tickets.
The proposal has already been approved and will be implemented shortly. The bank would also tie-up with Paymate and Bill Junction.com. Credit/debit cardholders of Canara Bank could make payments towards services such as power consumption bills, water-tax and also buy consumer goods. It would also enter into a tie-up with the National Financial Switch and State Bank of India and its subsidiaries to interconnect 20,000 automated teller machines (ATMs) of 28 banks.
The proposal has already been approved and will be implemented shortly. The bank would also tie-up with Paymate and Bill Junction.com. Credit/debit cardholders of Canara Bank could make payments towards services such as power consumption bills, water-tax and also buy consumer goods. It would also enter into a tie-up with the National Financial Switch and State Bank of India and its subsidiaries to interconnect 20,000 automated teller machines (ATMs) of 28 banks.
6. To sensitise accounting professionals about auditing in Information Technology (IT) environment, Comptroller and Auditor General of India today launched a month-long international training programme. The course has received participation from 22 members across 14 countries, including Armenia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Indonesia, Maldives, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, said Deputy CAG Bharti Prasad. The training programme would cover areas like general and application control, IT frameworks like COBIT and computer assisted tools such as IDEA, Excel and Access.
7. State Bank of India (market capitalisation: over Rs 86,000 crore) is planning a stock split. The bank, which is considering a number of capital raising plans—including a follow-on public offer and hiving off 10% in its proposed insurance asset management holding company—is awaiting passage of the SBI Act Amendment Bill before taking a final decision on the stock split.
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