Unity Infraprojects, , one of India's largest civil contractors, has secured an order worth Rs 54.50 crore from Amanora Park Town for construction of six towers, RCC works and upto gysum finish - (R21) Sector, Amanora Park Town, Hadapsar, Pune.
The project is scheduled to be completed within next 29 months.
SBI Life Insurance, India's third major private has announced the introduction of SBI Life Shubh Nivesh, a traditional savings plan with an option of whole life cover for its customers.
The newly introduced savings plan (Shubh Nivesh) has been designed to meet the savings, protection and income needs of customers having a risk-averse profile.
subscribers with an extra account from which funds can be withdrawn anytime they want.
An NPS subscriber can now have two accounts—a standard one and a flexible one. Although the norms for investing the contributions to these two accounts would be the same, subscribers will have greater flexibility in accessing funds from the second one, when needed. One can access funds from the standard account called tier one only for specific needs such as medical emergency or marriage. The flexible account will be introduced on December 1, 2009.
The pension regulator also decided in principle to introduce a low-cost pension scheme for the poor, for which PFRDA is negotiating with the record keeper to reduce the annual charges from Rs 350 to Rs 60, PFRDA chairman D Swarup told ET.
The National Securities Depositories (NSDL) has agreed to slash the charges to Rs 75 a year, but PFRDA is negotiating to further lower it to Rs 60. The scheme would enable a large section of the nearly 28 crore low-income workers such as rickshaw pullers, fishermen, weavers and street hawkers to have a safety net to lean on when they enter the twilight years of their working life.
“The idea of having more than one record keeping agency has also received the blessings of the PFRDA board,” said Mr Swarup. Competition among record keeping agencies would bring down cost and enhance efficiency, pension experts said.
The three-member board of the regulator also decided to accept proposals from corporate entities to manage their pension funds subject to the condition that these entities will have only those investment choices that are available to any other pension subscriber. They will not be able to customise the investment options. NPS’ fund management charges are quite low. The regulator has already received proposals in this regard from SBI and Himachal Road Transport Corporation.
its state-run banks and funding infrastructure projects. The bank said the loans would support the country’s economic stimulus measures by channeling resources into infrastructure, power and irrigation sectors.
“This is a crucial time to support Indian economic recovery,” World Bank country director for India Roberto Zagha told reporters in a video conference. “Despite the uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, current trends suggest a growth rate of between 5.5% and 6.5% for 2009-10 is realistic,” he said.
Of the total sanctioned amount, $2 billion will go to the Centre for enhancing the capital base of public sector banks, $1.195 billion to the India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFCL), $1 billion to PowerGrid Corporation and $150 million to Andhra Pradesh for a rural water supply and sanitation project, the World Bank said here.
The government will use the $2 billion for the banking sector to ensure that shortage of capital does not constrain the banks’ ability to lend. The World Bank denied media reports that the loan has pre-conditions such as asking the government to reduce concessional lending to certain priority sectors.
“No conditions are imposed on public sector banks. This is not a loan for the recapitalisation of banks. It provides budgetary support to the government of
Punjab National Bank (PNB), India's second largest public sector lender has decided to purchase a stake in Kazakhstan's Metrokombank.
The sources said that the pact may be concluded after due diligence is finalized.
The officials of Metrokombank stated in a communiqué that the deal will take place once several conditions are met, including a due diligence check and regulatory approvals.
The sources informed Metrokombank ranks 30th among Kazakhstan's 37 banks by assets, with 4.7 billion tenge (US$31.1mn) in assets as of Sept. 1.
echnical analyst Abhishek Jain of Stocksidea. com has suggested investors to buy ICICI Bank for short term.
Mr. Jain expects the stock to hit a target of Rs 925.
According to Mr. Jain, the stock may face some resistance around Rs 894 levels, but after that it can even have more upward movement.
The scrip has very strong support at Rs 802.
Royal Bank of Scotland and its offshoot NatWest todayhave announced cuts in overdraft fees.
The state-controlled bank, which is 70% owned by the taxpayer, said from 1 October it was cutting the "unpaid item fee" – imposed when a cheque, direct debit or standing order bounces – from £38 to £5. And the maximum amount that customers have to pay in unpaid item fees will fall from £114 a day to £50 a month.
The fee for paying for an item when overdrawn will be cut by half to £15 a day, while the "guaranteed card payment fee" (where a customer uses a debit card with cheque guarantee facility) will be reduced to £15 from £35. The latter fee will be capped at £90 a month – down from £105 a day.
Meanwhile, the monthly maintenance charge for going overdrawn without consent is down from £28 to £20.
The lower charges come as the test case on unauthorised overdraft costs continues to wind its way through the courts. The case has been brought by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) against seven banks and one building society questioning the fairness of the fees they impose when someone exceeds their agreed borrowing limit.
Brian Hartzer, the new head of the retail division, said: "As we look ahead there are many issues to consider, but we thought it was time to move this particular customer concern forward by cutting our charges."
He added: "At RBS, our support for our customers must be at the core of all that we do, as we work to return the bank to stand-alone strength. We are changing what we do as a bank and the way we do it. Today's announcement is one more example of the determination we have to support our customers." highest unauthorised overdraft charges on the high street, with fees of around £120 for a three-day overdraft.
The group's chief executive, Peter Vicary-Smith, said: "This is a step in the right direction and a victory for consumer pressure.
"However, if RBS and NatWest truly want to get back in their customers' good books, they should admit defeat in the bank charges test case and repay the millions of pounds Which? believes they've been unfairly taking from their current account holders for years."
Aviva, on Thursday launched of its ‘Street to School’ programme in
Aviva plc also plans to roll out a series of Street to School partnerships with other charities around the world over the coming months. From 2010, 50% of the group’s charitable donations will focus on ‘Street to School’ programs.
Aviva also unveiled a research report on the savings habits of young parents – ‘Aviva Young Scholar Insights’ – on the occasion. Of the 2,250 people surveyed across 10 urban cities, 67 per cent respondents mentioned that planning for a child’s future takes priority over retirement and protection.
TR Ramachandran, CEO & MD, of Aviva Life Insurance said, “As the survey suggests, parents believe ‘Education is Insurance’ to secure a brighter future for their kids.
On the other hand, 50% of children aged between 6-18 years do not get to go to school at all. Through our global ‘Street to School’ initiative, we seek to empower underprivileged children with Education, thereby insuring their future.”
State-run life insurance major LIC today said it would invest Rs 1 lakh crore in the equity market in the current financial year, up from Rs 35,000 crore during 2008-09.
“We have already invested Rs 40,000 crore in the stock market in the first four months of the current financial year and by March 2010, the company would invest an additional Rs 1 lakh crore,” LIC Zonal Manager (North) Vinay Kumar Sinha said.LIC had invested about Rs 35,000 crore in the equity market during 2008-09, he said. Such a large investment by the country’s biggest domestic financial institution will boost sentiments at bourses, which witnessed volatility, especially after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in America last October. Having crossed the 21,000 points-mark in January 2008, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark index (Sensex) nosedived to around 8,000 points last year itself.
In a bid to ensure that high networth individuals (HNIs) stayed with them, public sector banks, including State Bank of India (SBI), Union Bank of India, Bank of Baroda (BoB) and Bank of India (BoI), have been climbing on the wealth management bandwagon in recent months.
The country’s largest bank, SBI, has decided to set a cut-off of Rs 60 lakh for any individual to be called an HNI. This would qualify nearly 200,000 clients for specialised services such as relationship managers. Armed with specially-designed software, which is being tested, the manager will ensure that the customer does not have to visit a branch. And, in case someone does have to visit one, the plan is to have special sections with five-star ambience. While all this is still being finalised, the bank has kicked off operations in a small way with focus on the affluent section. So, customers with over Rs 5 lakh in the bank are eligible to avail themselves of this service. The bank is currently offering this service at 502 branches through 1,100 customer relationship executives. While SBI’s liability group, personal banking division and the new business group are working on the project called ‘Attracting
BoB’s wealth management foray is so far limited to only United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, unlike the foreign banks and some domestic players, the Indian public sector banks would not offer services such as succession planning. “In reality, art investment and a lot of other services that they talk about are all on paper. Succession planning is essentially advisory and the family has to take the final decision. So, as a bank, we are not in a position to advise our clients on such sensitive issues,” said a public sector bank executive, who spent several months trying to understand the services on offer.The key reason for public sector players entering the wealth space was to ensure that well-off customers did not move away to private banks that offered services such as relationship manager. In addition, they realised that branding the well-off as HNIs with a low cut-off made some clients feel special. The biggest advantage was the focused approach to cross-sell. For instance, SBI’s mutual fund or insurance arm can now sell the group’s products, which was not the case earlier. What has further prompted the move of the public sector banks to enter wealth management is the recent Sebi ban on entry load for distributors of mutual fund schemes. The ban hit these banks hard as they were quite active in distribution of mutual funds’ schemes. Although, government banks are still distributing mutual fund schemes, the ban has eroded their fee-based income. Now these banks are getting only 0.75-100 basis point upfront commission from fund houses compared to the 2.25 per cent load earlier. Hence, some of these banks are planning to offer advisory and charge clients for the same. Sebi mandates distributors and advisors to charge clients for advisory services. Experts said that public sector lenders’ entry into wealth management might offer some competition to private and foreign banks that have been dominating the space. Government banks might have an edge over the private and foreign players because of their large deposit base, they added. Barclays Wealth Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Satyanarayan Bansal said, “Private banking in
