Banking Bill to be considered this parliament session
New Delhi: The monsoon session of Parliament will see nine Bills including the Banking Companies (Acquisition and Transfer of Undertakings) and Financial Institutions Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2006 being taken up for discussion and passage.

According to the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Priyaranjan Dasmunsi, the banking bill proposes to increase the number of wholetime directors in banks from two to four. It also envisages making Government share transferable. In the previous parliament session the Union Cabinet had approved amendments to the Bill with a view to providing more flexibility to the board of directors and improving corporate governance in banks.

This Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 16 last year. Thereafter it was referred to the Standing Committee of Parliament on Finance for examination. The Committee recommended some modifications.

The Amendment Bill will bring the operations of nationalised banks in tune with the changed scenario and modern business practices.
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Tata AIG in pact with Audatex
Mumbai: Tata AIG General Insurance Company has tied up with Audatex India to provide online motor claim settlement solution.

Audatex India will offer Tata AIG General the Web-based, fully integrated solution, AudaEnterprise, which will assist the company in managing the entire range of claims activity from intimation of accident to settling of claims and beyond. According to a press release, the Audatex solution will reduce the turnaround time of claim settlement by about 50 per cent and will benefit over five lakh auto policyholders of Tata AIG General Insurance. With this solution, body shops will submit an estimate for the repair of damaged cars and the insurer's engineers will evaluate the estimate and accept the liability after making an assessment of the damage on-line.

With this tie-up Tata AIG General hopes to add more services to its existing portfolio, to halve the claim settlement time and thus significantly increase customer satisfaction in the auto insurance segment.

Audatex India says it has invested $3 million in its Indian operations and is looking at investing $4 million more in the next two years in hardware, software, data and training infrastructure.
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Vijaya Bank offers Kisan Card for farmers
Coimbatore: Vijaya Bank has launched the ATM-enabled Vijaya Kisan Card to enable farmers draw cash from any of its ATMs and from other banks' VISA ATMs. The bank is planning to activate 110 ATMs more this fiscal, taking the total ATM strength to 250. Vijaya bank CMD, Prakash P. Mallya, said the initiative was aimed at providing a simple, comprehensible and flexible credit package to farmers.

Cardholders would be eligible for personal accident insurance cover of up to Rs50,000. The bank and borrower would share the annual premium of Rs15 per cardholder in 2:1 ratio. The card would be valid for a period of three years subject to annual review. The bank has issued 2.14 lakh kisan cards this far.
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RBI expected to hike PLR by 25 bps
Mumbai: Bankers are expecting the Reserve Bank of India to hike short term interest rates by 0.25 pc in its monetary policy review to be announced Tuesday. However, they feel that the central bank will not make any changes in Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) and Bank Rate.

RBI is likely to raise repo and reverse repo rates, said Oriental Bank of Commerce chairman K N Prithviraj. He said that with the cost of funds rising, the margins of the banks are under pressure.
Finance Minister P Chidambaram had said if interest rates rose then it would be due to inflationary expectations.

However, bankers do not see any hike in CRR and SLR limit as excess liquidity will be moderate after credit pick up in the coming months as economy is growing at a higher rate.
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SBI may head for a makeoever
Mumbai: The State Bank of India, which is India's largest bank, may soon go in for a makeover with the government of India replacing the Reserve Bank of India as the dominant shareholder of SBI.

The Finance Ministry is said to have communicated to the management of the bank to take a hard look at its existing business model and to make a course correction, if needed, after an internal review. SBI has also been told to engage an external consultant to review its operations if the management feels there is a case for it.
The ministry has identified SBI and a clutch of other banks for scaling up performance levels and intends to closely monitor their progress, a senior government official said.

The SBI group, with a retail banking franchise of over 13,000, has a share of 18 pc in the total deposits and advances in the banking system, besides a major presence in the forex business.

SBI, with assets worth $110.7bn, or almost Rs5,00,000 crore, in FY06, reported a marginal increase of 2.4 pc in net profit in FY06 compared to the previous year.

The profits were boosted on account of interest on income tax refund, an exchange gain of Rs563.5 crore due to the redemption of the India Millennium Deposits (IMD) and unreconciled net credit balances. These are non-recurring profits and took the sheen off the bank's performance, officials said.

In a recent presentation, SBI has indicated that it intends to face the challenges posed by competition in the retail banking segment by forming strategic business units, centralised processing and credit approvals.

Retail banking is expected to power the bank's growth in the coming years. SBI also plans to focus more on fee income business, derisking its investment portfolio, greater recovery of bad loans, expanding the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) network and building alternate delivery channels.
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ICICI Bank on recruitment drive
Mumbai: ICICI Bank has gone on a major recruitment drive and is looking at having a 50,000 strong workforce in place in three years from now. Its current staff strength is 28,500. By the end of '06-07 the bank is planning to expand its manpower strength to 35,000.

India's largest private sector bank is in the process of doubling the existing branch network and size of operations and its retail operations, which account for 67 pc of its total business and the rapidly growing rural markets will create the major need for manpower said company officials.

ICICI Bank is the largest employer among the private sector banks and requires personnel in all functions including finance, marketing, operations, information technology and human resources. Keeping in mind its urgent requirement for trained personnel the bank has designed a training and orientation module aimed at training candidates in only 60 days instead of the average 180 days required in the banking sector.

ICICI Bank has joined hands with institutes like ICFAI Business School and NIIT to introduce the curriculum suited to the needs of the banking sector. A senior official of the bank informed they are in talks with some other prominent institute to introduce courses and specialisation related to banking.
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Left parties relent marginally on Pension Bill
New Delhi: The Left parties are said to have made a marginal change in their stance on Pension Funds Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill at the UPA-Left Coordination Committee meeting held yesterday but failed to agree on the crucial issues of privatisation and deployment of pension funds in the equity market.

The Left leaders told the government that they had "no problems" with the proposal to turn pension into a contributory scheme. Until now, the Left parties were completely opposed to turning the pension, a statutory benefit, into a contributory scheme.
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