Page 24 - Banking Sector

New India Bank case: Accused civil contractor in police custody till Mar 19

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police has arrested an accused from Vadodara in the Rs 122-crore embezzlement at New India Cooperative Bank, an official said on Saturday. Civil contractor Kapil Dedhia was apprehended in the Gujarat city on Friday and brought to Mumbai on Saturday. A local court here remanded him in police custody till March 19, he said. According to the police, Rs 12 crore of the misappropriated amount was credited to Dedhia's account. He received a part of the money from real estate developer Dharmesh Paun, also an accused. Dedhia also received money from Unnathan Arunachalam, another wanted accused in the case, and prime accused Hitesh Mehta, the bank's former general manager and head of accounts. Further investigation is underway to trace the entire fund flow and identify other individuals involved in the fraud, the official said. According to the police, Rs 122 crore was embezzled from the safes of the bank's Prabhadevi and Goregaon offices in .

Global index inclusion to help IndusInd as stock faces Sensex, Nifty ouster

Lender's stock price has plunged due to concerns around losses on account of its derivatives portfolio

RBI awarded digital transformation Award 2025 for digital initiatives

The awards committee noted how these digital initiatives have reduced the use of paper-based submissions, thus transforming RBI's internal and external processes

CLSA lowers target price for IndusInd Bank to Rs 900 but sees 34% upside

Near term fraught with uncertainty but if history is a guide fundamentals could drive a recovery, says the brokerage

HDFC MF holding in IndusInd Bank crosses 5% with additional 1.6 mn shares

IndusInd Bank on Thursday said that the holding of HDFC Mutual Fund in the bank has crossed 5 per cent as the fund house purchased an additional 15.92 lakh shares from the market. The stake increase comes a day after IndusInd Bank announced a whopping Rs 2,100 crore discrepancy in accounting with an estimated impact of 2.35 per cent of the bank's net worth. Soon after the disclosure, a massive price correction in the bank's shares was witnessed. The aggregate holding of HDFC Mutual Fund Scheme in IndusInd Bank as of the close of business hours on March 11, 2025, was 5.02 per cent of the paid up equity capital of the company, the bank said in a regulatory filing. Following an additional 0.20 per cent stake purchase, HDFC Mutual Fund through its various schemes had 77.9 crore shares at the end of March 11, it said. Prior to the stake purchase, HDFC Mutual Fund's holding was 4.82 per cent but with an additional share purchase, the holding rose to 5.02 per cent. The filing however did

GenAI may boost banking operations' productivity by 46% by 2030: EY

Generative AI (GenAI) is poised to improve productivity levels of Indian financial services by 34 to 38 per cent by 2030 and up to 46 per cent, specifically for banking operations, said a EY report. The report titled 'How much productivity can GenAI unlock in India? The AIdea of India: 2025' emphasised that GenAI) is reshaping India's financial services landscape, driving significant advancements in customer engagement, operational efficiency, and risk assessment. It said the survey canvassed more than 125 C-suite executives across India. They represent diverse sectors, including financial services, retail, healthcare, life sciences, media and entertainment, technology, automotive, industrials and energy. According to the study, 74 per cent of financial firms have initiated proof-of-concept projects, and 11 per cent have moved to production-level deployments. "Investment in GenAI is also increasing, with 42 per cent of organisations actively allocating budgets toward AI initiatives

Bank's asset quality to deteriorate moderately in F26 and FY27: Moody's

Funding tightness to abate as loan-to-deposit ratio stabilizes

IndusInd Bank CEO confident of Q4 net profit despite derivatives hit

Kathpalia assures strong capital adequacy as promoters reaffirm trust in bank

IndusInd Bank's net worth to take 2.35% hit over account discrepancies

The Mumbai-based lender said the net worth impact emerged from internal derivative trades, which were not in compliance with rules enforced by the Reserve Bank of India from April 2024

IndusInd Bank shares drop 4% as RBI okays short-term CEO extension

This is the second consecutive time that the banking regulator has approved a shorter tenor, despite the board requesting a full three-year term

Small-cap banks take the lead in average spend per credit card transaction

Credit-card spending for January stood at Rs 1,841 billion, marking a two per cent slide month-on-month (MoM), but a strong 14 per cent year-on-year growth

Bank of India adds 111 new branches to expand urban, semi-urban reach

As of December 2024, BoI had 5,202 branches in the country, with 993 in metros, 838 in urban centres, 1,501 in semi-urban centres, and 1,868 in rural areas

Banks' Apr-Dec performance robust, impaired loan ratio near trough: Fitch

Fitch Ratings on Monday said Indian banks have performed robustly in the first nine months of the current financial year with the sector's impaired loan ratio close to the trough. In its commentary, Fitch said improvements in key performance metrics of Indian banks in the past few years will provide strong support for their Viability Ratings (VRs). The global rating agency also said that Indian banks' risk appetites have been more calibrated since 2018, with efforts to diversify loans and improve the quality of corporate exposures contributing to lower bad loan formation. Lower legacy bad loans drove improvement in banks' gross impaired loan ratios and earnings, Fitch said. However, these risk enhancements have yet to be fully tested, and banks have tended to vary risk appetite through cycles, such as growth in unsecured personal loans in recent years until regulatory measures discouraged this behaviour, Fitch noted. "Indian banks performed robustly in the first nine months of the

Long haul for growth: How GDP dynamics may shape up in the coming quarters

Looking at India's growth performance from the expenditure lens indicates a pickup in the private consumption expenditure to 6.9% YoY in Q3FY25 compared to 5.9% YoY in Q2FY25

BS Manthan: Bilateralism now topping the agenda, says FM Sitharaman

The global churn and India's reset played out on day one of BS thought summit, with the who's who from government, economy, banking, defence coming together

EOW arrests son of absconding businessman in New India Coop Bank fraud case

The Mumbai police's economic offences wing (EOW) has arrested the son of a businessman wanted in connection with the embezzlement of Rs 122 crore at the New India Cooperative Bank, an official said on Friday. The EOW on Thursday arrested Manohar Arunachalam (33), the son of absconding accused Unnathan Arunachalam, the official said. This is the fourth arrest in connection with the case, he said. The EOW had earlier arrested three persons, including the bank's ex-general manager, Hitesh Mehta, and real estate developer, Dharmesh Paun. The official said Manohar allegedly helped his father, Unnathan Arunachalam alias Arun Bhai, to flee, and a probe has revealed that he was with his father when the latter absconded. He will be produced in a court later in the day, the official said. EOW officials have been searching for Unnathan Arunachalam for the last several days, and a lookout circular has been issued against him According to the EOW, the bank's ex-general manager, Hitesh Mehta,

Physical banking will get slower in terms of share, says Uday Kotak

Speaking at the Business Standard's annual conclave BS Manthan, Uday Kotak, founder and director of Kotak Mahindra Bank said politics is emerging as a highly disruptive force, reshaping global finance

New India Coop Bank had capacity for Rs 10 cr, book showed Rs 122 cr: EOW

New India Cooperative Bank's Prabhadevi branch in Mumbai had a capacity to keep Rs 10 crore at a time, but the cash in hand book showed there was Rs 122.028 crore in the safe on the day of RBI inspection, police officials said on Tuesday, citing probe into a fraud case. Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) is probing a Rs 122-crore embezzlement at New India Cooperative Bank and has arrested three persons, including two former top executives of the lender, so far. The RBI inspection team visited the corporate office branch of the bank at Prabhadevi on February 11, where they found Rs 122 crore cash was missing from the safe, an official said. The balance sheet at the corporate office branch was showing Rs 133.41 crore at the bank's safe at Prabhadevi and Goregaon branches, and Rs 122.028 was the figure on the balance sheet of Prabhadevi branch on that day, he said. During the probe, the EOW found the capacity of the safe at the corporate office to store cash was only Rs 10 .

FinMin defers performance review meeting with heads of PSU banks to Mar 5

The finance ministry has deferred performance review meeting with heads of public sector banks (PSBs) by a day to March 5. The meeting, to be chaired by Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju, would review financial performance and progress of financial inclusion schemes, among others, sources said. Earlier, Department of Financial Services had fixed March 4 for the meeting. This is going to be the first meeting after presentation of Union Budget 2025-26 in Parliament. The 12 PSBs have posted highest-ever net profit of Rs 1.29 lakh crore in the April-December period of the current fiscal year, marking an annual increase of 31.3 per cent. The performance of PSBs has shown significant improvement on key financial parameters, like record net profit growth, improved asset quality, and build-up of adequate capital buffers, during the period under review. Further, improved asset quality is also visible from significantly low net NPA ratio at 0.59 per cent (aggregate net NPA outstandin

Microfinance loan book shrinks 3.5% to Rs 3.85 trillion in Dec quarter

Share of overdue loans shoots to 6.4%