Moody’s Downgrades ICICI UK’s Long Term Debt
Moody’s, the global rating agency, last week downgraded ICICI Bank UK, the British subsidiary of ICICI Bank. The ratings agency downgraded supported long term bank deposits, senior unsecured debt and also revised the ratings for subordinated and junior subordinated debt issued by the bank.
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Reliance Stops Making New Consumer Loans
Anil Ambani controlled Reliance Consumer Finance; the consumer lending division of ADAG unit Reliance Capital stopped making fresh loans effective last week the Reuters news agency reported citing the Hindustan Times as its source.
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RBI Sets Up Currency Swaps For Banks Needing Dollar Funding
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week said it will provide foreign exchange liquidity to foreign branches and subsidiaries of Indian banks through currency swaps.The Indian central bank said that such a measure would ease pressure on Indian banks managing short term fund requirements for their overseas business’s that have been squeezed by the global credit crisis.
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SBI Card to Offer “Financial Difficulty Package”
State Bank of India’s credit card unit SBI Card is to roll out a “financial difficulty package”. The scheme is aimed at customers who have a decent repayment record but have recently defaulted due to financial difficulties.
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Supreme Court Admits Credit Card Interest Rate Appeal.
The Business Standard reported on Wednesday that the Supreme Court of India has admitted the appeal by the banking industry lobby against the order of the National Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission which sought to limit credit card interest rates.
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SBI Cuts Prime Lending Rate
State Bank of India (SBI) India’s largest bank has decided to reduce its prime lending rate by 75 basis points. The cut in interest rate is effective today, and was hammered out last week when the Chairmen of India’s 28 largest state owned lenders met with the Finance Minister P Chidamabaram. State owned commercial banks, account for around 96 per cent of the domestic credit market, and have agreed to cut benchmark prime lending rates in an effort to spur economic growth.
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SBI to Open 1500 Branches Next Year
The Business Standard Reported at the end of October that India’s largest bank, State Bank of India plans to open more than 1500 in the next calendar year. The bank recently reported a 40.4 percent increase in net profit, and the branch expansion plans were revealed during the press conference by bank Chairman OP Bhatt.
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RBI report on Credit Card Use in India
The RBI (Reserve Bank of India) released a report at the beginning of the month detailing credit card and debit card use in India. There has been a substantial increase in the use of both these types of cards to make payments. The RBI estimates that the value of India credit card and debit card transactions increased by over 42% in the year 2007-2008. The total value of transactions for the time period being studied stood at Rs 72,000 Crores, which in US Dollars works out to a little over US$ 15.6 Billion.
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Supreme Court Keeps Credit Card Interest Rates on Hold
The Supreme Court of India has deferred making a decision on invalidating the directive made by a National Consumer Forum, that Credit Card annual rates of Interest may not exceed 30% per annum for defaulting or late paying borrowers. This is obviously welcome respite for borrowers who in some instances were being charged up to 49% annually. Multinational Banks such as HSBC, Citibank and American Express bank had petitioned the Supreme Court for a stay on the directive, challenging the order given by the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission back in July 2007.
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HDFC Internet Banking and ATM system Crashes
HDFC customers woke up to a nasty shock on Tuesday 2nd September, when internet-banking services were disabled and customers could not withdraw funds from ATM machines. When contacted for a statement, an HDFC representative cryptically said the following “HDFC Bank today experienced a technical problem in one of its system applications catering to its retail customers, affecting certain services”. Asked whether any other services had been disrupted, the HDFC spokesperson Neeraj Jha, Head, Corporate Communications added “The bank’s other systems like Corporate Banking, Depository, Treasury, Credit Cards etc. functioned normally. The bank is working to resolve the problem and expects resumption of full services shortly”.
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