Tides of 7.07.2015

1.   State Bank of India has over three million home loan customers with a portfolio of over Rs 16,60,000 crs.

2.    Reliance Capital Asset Management Company (RCAM) and ICICI Securities Primary Dealership have been selected to manage Rs 60,000 crs provident fund corpus of coal industry workers. The decision was taken by the board of trustees (BOT) of the Coal Mines Provident Fund Organisation (CMPFO) in its meeting, chaired by Coal Secretary Anil Swarup, who is the Chairman of BOT. Out of the four -- SBI, UTI, RCAM and ICICI Securities , RCAM and ICICI have been selected for management of about Rs 60,000 crore provident fund corpus of the coal industry workers. Both RCAM and ICICI have emerged as the lowest bidders in the financial bids. Earlier the four managers had qualified for the financial bid after clearing the technical round. A member of the trustees said there are about 4.5 lakh members of the CMPFO and the corpus fund would further increase from about Rs 60,000 crore as about 62,000 contract coal workers have been added to the fold.

3.    National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and JCB International Co. Ltd, a subsidiary of Japan's JCB Co. Ltd., are entering into a partnership for payment cards issuance and acceptance. Under the pact, JCB cards will be accepted at all NPCI locations in the country. The partnership will also include the issuance of RuPay/JCB international cards by NPCI member banks that will be globally accepted through the JCB network.  The two sides target to launch JCB acceptance business around the middle of next year and RuPay/JCB International card issuing business later in 2016. NPCI also has another partnership with US-based Discover Financial Services card network for international acceptance of RuPay cards.

4.    Banks have welcomed new rules that could allow them to take majority stakes in troubled companies as a warning to wayward entrepreneurs, even if the provisions will not apply to the bulk of struggling loans from past years. The RBI which has long sought to make majority shareholders more responsible for any failures, allow lenders to turn loans to defaulting companies into equity in those firms of 51% or more.

5.    India Post, which has started issuing personalised debit cards to its savings account holders, is planning to issue 5 lakh new debit cards over the next two months.  To start with, the account holders will be able to use these cards only at 115 India Post ATMs.For now, these cards can be used at our ATMs only. Once inter-operability is allowed, it can be used at other ATMs also. India Post is looking at opening 1,000 additional ATMs by March-end. It has 25,000 branches across the country and some 34 crore account holders from CBS-enabled and non-CBS branches. Their plan is to complete implementation of CBS at all our 25,000 branches by March 31, 2016.