1. BANKS’ BAD LOANS CROSS Rs. 10 LAKH CRORE: Indian Banks’ Gross Non-Performing Assets
(NPAs) stood at Rs. 10.25 lakh Crore as on 31/03/2018. As on 31/12/2017 the bad loans were
Rs. 8.86 lakh Crore. That means in the last quarter of FY 2018 the pile has grown by Rs. 1.39
Lakh crore or 16% jump from December quarter which is really alarming. A break-up of NPAs
shows that 21 Public Sector Banks (PSBs) have a Gross NPA of Rs 8.97 lakh crore and that of 18
private sector banks stood at Rs 1.28 lakh crore as on 31/03/2018.
2. AFFORDABLE HOME LOANS A WORRY FOR RBI: Reserve Bank of India has said that it is closely
monitoring the small Housing loan segment of up to Rs. 2.00 lakh and after careful analysis of
the said data, it has been observed that the level of NPAs (Bad loans) for ticket size of up to Rs.
2.00 lakh is very high and has been rising briskly. Reserve Bank has warned all banks that it will
be constrained to make small ticket housing loans more expensive under the affordable housing
scheme and force borrowers to pay up more money if banks don’t tighten the standards and
address the rising bad loan scenario in this segment.

3. CO-OPERATIVE BANKS COULD BECOME SMALL FIANANCE BANKS: Reserve Bank of India has
opened the doors for Urban Co-operative Banks (UCBs) to convert into Small Finance Banks
giving them more freedom and access to open branches pan India and thus opening up a larger
market for these lenders which at present are of local nature. The details of the scheme will be
announced separately.

4. CAPITAL FIRST’S MERGER WITH IDFC BANK GETS RBI NOD: Reserve Bank of India has issued a
No Objection Certificate for the merger of IDFC Bank and Capital First. Now IDFC Bank has to
approach the shareholders and creditors of the merged companies. A clearance from NCLT is
also required to clear the way for both the entities to merge. Capital First Home Finance and
Capital First Securities will also merge with IDFC bank.

5. TROUBLED MSMEs GET A BREATHER FROM RBI: In a relief to Micro, Small & Medium
Enterprises (MSMEs) affected by the rollout of GST, RBI has given them a temporary breather
by allowing them to delay their loan repayments by 180 days without being classified as NPA.
This facility will be available to all MSMEs with aggregate credit limits of up to Rs. 25 crore,
irrespective of whether they are registered under GST or not. Accordingly, eligible MSME
accounts, which were standard as on 31/08/2017 shall continue to be standard asset if
payments due as on 01/09/2017, and falling due thereafter up to 31/12/2017 were paid not
later than 180 days from their original due date.

6. PSBs’ FY18 LOSSES HAVE WIPED OUT GOVERNMENT’S $ 13 BILLION INFUSIONS: Losses by
state run banks have entirely wiped out $ 13 billion ( Rs 87,100 Crores) capital infusion by the
government and the situation is not likely to improve in the current fiscal as well. Rating agency
Fitch has said that the big losses will pressure the banks viability rating.

7. BANKS PLAN TO SELL Rs. 28,000 CRORE NPAs: Seven banks including the big brothers like SBI
and ICICI Bank are in the process of selling their bad loan portfolio totalling to Rs. 28,000 crore
to asset reconstruction companies in the coming weeks without waiting for the resolutions. SBI
and ICICI bank have already disclosed their list of assets that would be put on sale and other
banks are in final stages. The largest share is that of IDBI bank which has identified 30 accounts
with Rs. 21,399 crore. SBI has identified 12 accounts worth Rs. 1,325 crore while ICICI bank has
identified 16 accounts amounting to Rs. 2,330 crore.

8. AXIS BANK LAUNCHES NEW CHAT BOT SERVICE: Axis bank has launched a virtual assistant for
its customers armed with artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms and named it
“AXIS AHA” The chatbot is designed to provide relevant contextual responses to customer
queries and even help them make transactions on the chat window itself.