RBI grants 12 years to LIC for reducing stake in which bank?

Karnataka Bank has entered into an MoU with Bharti AXA Life Insurance Company to distribute the latter's life insurance products. The bank will be able to provide a wide choice of life insurance products to its customers across 836 branches, supported by the products of Bharti AXA Life Insurance Company. This is the third such tie-up by the bank after PNB MetLife Life Insurance Company and LIC of India, both of which continue to provide insurance solutions to the customers of Karnataka Bank.

Max Bupa, India's health insurance company collaborated with HDFC Bank, India's leading private sector banks, and launched 'AnyTimeHealth (ATH) machines. The machine is an automated, web-based model that permits customers to avail health assessment, namely, Body Mass Index', 'Blood Pressure', 'Body Type & Fat percentage', 'Muscle percentage', 'Bone Mass', 'Body Temperature' and buy health policy dynamically without incorporation of any kind of conventional manual efforts. Max Bupa partnered with HDFC Bank to design an end-to-end 'digital journey' for the bank's customers, which is designed to support HDFC Bank's assisted and non-assisted mode of selling insurance digitally, thus empowering the HDFC's customers to avail health insurance solutions proficiently.

Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) signed a loan agreement on behalf of the government of USD 83.11 million to Congo for financing three solar power projects in the central African country. It aims to provide support for financing three solar photovoltaic power projects with a total capacity of 35 megawatts in the three provinces - Karawa, Mbandaka, and Lusambo.

The Reserve Bank of India sanctioned reinsurance brokers to initiate non-interest bearing foreign currency accounts with banks for undertaking transactions. The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) had issued notification and following this the RBI declared Foreign Exchange Management (Foreign Currency Accounts by a resident person in India) Regulations, 2015 - Opening of Foreign Currency Accounts by Re-insurance and Composite Insurance brokers. Foreign currency account refers to a bank account operated in currency other than the currency of India or Bhutan or Nepal.

Fitch Ratings has recently said in its APAC sovereign credit overview report that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the first Asia-Pacific (APAC) central bank to begin interest rate easing cycle by cutting the policy rate back-to-back in the last two monetary policy reviews in 2019. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by RBI Govenor Shaktikanta Das, cut rates in February and April, citing prospects of benign inflation. In the four months of 2019, the RBI has cut policy interest rates twice twice by 0.25% each to one-year low of 6%. Earlier in April 2019, Fitch Ratings kept India's rating unchanged for the 13th time in a row at BBB- , which is the lowest investment grade, along with a stable outlook. The agency cited various challenges faced by the country such as high public debt, weak financial sector and lagging structural reforms.

IDBI Bank has launched 'NRI-Insta Online' account opening process for NRIs residing in Financial Action Task Force (FATF)member countries to open an account in the Bank without visiting the branch or submitting paper documents such as physical documents as well as KYC proofs. This online facility is available in IDBI Bank's website. FATF is an inter-governmental body founded in 1989, which devices policy and sets standards to promote successful implementation of legal, regulatory and operational measures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other similarthreats to the integrity of the international financial system.

According to the data of Reserve Bank of India, which was released on 11th April, 2019, bank credit rose 13.24% to Rs 97.67 lakh crore for the fortnight to March 29.This is the second consecutive robust credit growth after the same had declined to 4.54 percent in FY17 at Rs 78.41 lakh crore, which was the lowest since 5 decades.Deposits have grown by 10.03 percent to Rs 125.72 lakh crore during the same period.

RBL Bank has partnered with CreditVidya to enhance the lender's customer experience (by offering them relevant credit products) and construct customised offerings for over 15 lakh customers. RBL bank had first partnered with CreditVidya in 2018 for instant and automated verification of employment details of salaried card applicants. RBL Bank will leverage CreditVidya's big data underwriting platform across its credit card and mobile banking apps. CreditVidya helps lenders, wallets assess risk of customers, leverages alternative data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for credit scoring for the facilitation of institutional credit for the underserved.

Bandhan Bank has received approval from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for the proposed scheme of amalgamation of Gruh Finance with the bank. The approval has been made under sub-section (1) of Section 31 of the Competition Act, 2002. Bandhan Bank had, in January 2019, announced the merger of Gruh Finance with it. The move was taken to bring down promoter holding in the bank to 61% from 82.3%.

Corporation Bank celebrated its 114th Foundation Day on 12th March at various centres of the bank across the nation and undertook 114 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to mark the day. CEO and MD for the bank P.V Bharathi, Executive Directors Gopal Murli Bhagat and Birupaksha Mishra and other senior officials were present at the occasion. Corp Ease- which is a mobile banking app in 10regional languages, was launched by P.V Bharathi.