1. BANKS WITH MORE THAN 10 BRANCHES TO HAVE INTERNAL OMBUDSMAN: The Reserve Bank of
India has instructed all the Scheduled Commercial Banks with more than 10 branches to appoint an
Internal Ombudsman (IO). Regional Rural Banks are excluded from this. The Internal Ombudsman
scheme is introduced by RBI to strengthen the internal grievances of the bank and to ensure that
the complaints of the customer are redressed at the earliest. The bank shall escalate all such
complaints which are not fully redressed to their respective IOs before conveying the final decision to
the complainant. The customer need not approach the IO directly.
2. RBI SLAPS Rs. 1 CRORE FINE ON SOME BANKS: Reserve Bank of India has imposed a fine of Rs 1 crore
each on Union Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra and Bank of India. The penalty has been imposed
taking into account the delay on the part of the banks to detect and report fraud in an account. The
penalty has been imposed in exercise of powers vested in RBI under Banking Regulation Act.
3. PAYTM BUILDING NEW TECHNOLOGY TO CHECK “CREDIBILITY SCORE” OF BORROWER: Paytm is
evolving a mechanism to determine the “Credibility Score” of a person seeking loan from banks. The
company’s team in Toronto is actively working on a reliable system that can be relied upon by banks
to ascertain the credibility of a loan seeker. Paytm’s Toronto team is working on an algorithm based
on a person’s digital transactions to present a solution. If reliable system is evolved, it can predict with
sufficient accuracy about the capacity and willingness of an individual to repay his loan.
4. AIRTEL PAYMENTS BANK OFFERS CARD-LESS CASH WITHDRAWAL AT SELECT ATMs: Airtel Payments
Bank has tied up with Empays Payment systems to enable its savings account holders to withdraw
cash using their mobile phones through the card-less cash technology of Empays which is called
Instant Money Transfer (IMT). So now Airtel Payment Bank customers can make card-less cash
withdrawals at select ATMs across the country using IMT technology. IMT is the largest interoperable
card-less cash ATM network in the world, built and run by Empays Payment Systems India Pvt Ltd.
5. BANKS ASK RBI TO EASE ATM CASH MANAGEMENT RULES: Banks have approached RBI to relax rules
on how cash is carted to ATMs on the grounds that the revised rules are very hard to follow. Banks
were expected to put in place a host of measures from July 2018 with respect to cash movement.
These were aimed at preventing various kinds of frauds. In an attempt to prevent such frauds, the RBI
had come out with some stringent steps which included refilling ATMs using the “cassette-swap
method”, under which cash would be filled inside locked cassettes which would then be inserted in
ATMs by service providers.
6. TAX RETURNS FILED BEFORE DEADLINE SURGES BY 70%: With the government introducing fine for
delayed filing of income tax returns after 31 St august 2018, the number of I-T returns filed before
deadline touched to 5.42 crore which is 70% more than last year. Last year 3.17 returns were filed
before deadline. The improvement is on account of the gentle and sustained persuasion by the tax
department by way of SMS messages and Emails.
7. MONETARY LIMIT FOR FILING CASES IN DRT INCREASED TO Rs 20 LAKH: The government has
increased the monetary limit to Rs. 20 lakh for filing loan recovery application in the Debt Recovery
Tribunals (DRTs) by banks and financial institutions. As a result any bank or financial institution cannot
approach DRTs if the claim amount is less than Rs. 20 lakh. This amount is enhanced to help reduce
pendency.
8. IDEA-VODAFONE MERGER TO BECOME LARGEST TELECOM SUBSCRIBER: Vodafone India & Idea
Cellular announced completion of their merger, creating the country’s largest telecom subscriber with
a subscriber base of over 408 million, revenue market share of 32.2% and subscriber market share of
41.1%. The combined entity also has largest spectrum holding around 1850 MHz across bands.