Banking Reforms

The government should consider launching public offerings of highly profitable Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) to attract market capital and promote stronger corporate governance standards, a Parliamentary panel has said in its report. Standing Committee on Finance, headed by senior BJP leader Bhartruhari Mahtab noted the successful completion of the structural consolidation of RRBs, reducing their number from 43 to 28 highly viable entities across 11 states, eliminating the need for further capital infusion in 2026-27. RRBs have achieved a historic consolidated net profit of Rs 7,720 crore in just the first nine months of FY 2025-26, driving gross NPAs down to a 13-year low of 5.4 per cent, though vulnerabilities remain, particularly the 13.8 per cent GNPA in priority sector education loans. The panel recommend that RRBs actively mitigate these specific sectoral risks by fully leveraging their inclusion in the Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme for Education Loans (CGFSEL) and aggressively .

The India-US trade deal, had it come a little earlier, would not have made the Union Budget any different, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said

The proposed committee could examine long-pending issues such as corporate entry into banking, FDI norms, voting rights caps and consolidation

RBI Deputy Governor M Rajeshwar Rao warns of high interest rates, borrower over-indebtedness, and coercive recovery in India's microfinance sector, calls for urgent lender reforms

Business Standard BFSI Summit 2024 highlights: Catch all the updates related to the BFSI summit here

Business Standard BFSI Summit 2024 updates: Catch all the updates related to the BFSI summit here

Next-generation reforms are at the bottom of the list of nine priorities of this Budget

The report said that 76 per cent of CISOs polled witnessed the aforementioned challenge

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attributed India's sustained economic growth to the efforts of the BJP government to replace pre-2014 'phone banking' with 'digital banking'. Referring to the previous UPA regime, he said under 'phone banking', instructions were given on phone to banks regarding whom they had to lend to and at what terms and conditions. "The economy of any country is as progressive as its banking system is strong," the Prime Minister said after dedicating 75 Digital Banking Units (DBUs) to the nation via video-conference. Observing that the country has shifted from the pre-2014 'phone banking' system to digital banking in the last eight years, he said "as a result, India's economy is moving forward with a continuum." Modi said before 2014, the banks used to get phone calls to decide their functioning, and added "phone banking politics had made the banks unsafe and made the country's economy insecure by sowing the seeds of thousands of crores of scams." The ..

In a Q&A, the former deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, dwells on the areas where he feels UPA did not meet up to the challenges and the progress made by the BJP on certain fronts

Meeting quorum of board sub-committees becomes difficult sometimes, say bankers

The takeover of this bankrupt urban cooperative bank by the Centrum-BharatPe combine marks the first instance of NBFCs, high-net worth individuals and fintechs being allowed entry in this space

Four to five PSBs have been suggested by the Niti Aayog and they will be discussed in the meeting, sources said

The government must test the efficacy of privatising two banks first before going the whole hog

Says banking sector was badly hit 12 years ago due to aggressive lending; but now instead of brushing NPAs under the carpet, it is mandatory to report even one-day defaults

Mired in corruption, politics and with a history of suicides by its hapless depositors, PMC Bank's revival is a challenge very different from Yes Bank and LVB, both for the regulator and the rescuer

A status check on the consolidation of four sets of state-run banks offers clues to the hard decisions that are needed, write Abhijit Lele and Raghu Mohan

Inadequately capitalised banks will face problems in increasing their credit portfolios. A credit squeeze on account of banks' balance-sheet constraints would also have larger macroeconomic dimensions

Bad bank will only kick the can down the road

The potential turnaround in banking means the government does not need to act in haste, only to repent at leisure