As per Forbes World's Best Bank survey, which bank has been identified as number 1 bank by customers in India?

The country's largest lender State Bank of India has signed a pact with the Bank of China to boost business opportunities. SBI has signed an MoU to enhance business synergies between both the banks. Through this pact, both SBI and BoC will gain direct access to their respective markets of operation. Both banks' clients will be able to use the vast combined network to expand their businesses abroad. SBI has a branch in Shanghai and BOC is opening its branch in Mumbai.

The government has announced that Karnam Sekar (MD and CEO of the erstwhile Dena Bank) will take over as MD and CEO of Indian Overseas Bank from July 1. His term will end in June 2020. Also, R A Sankara Narayanan (former MD and CEO of Vijaya Bank) will move to Canara Bank as MD and CEO. His term will end in January 2020.

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.

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%.

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.

The BSE has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with HDFC Bank with an objective to strengthen the BSE Startups platform. The MoU has been signed to spread more awareness on the benefits of the listing of startups on this BSE startup platform. The exchange had launched the startup platform in December, with an aim to encourage entrepreneurs to get listed and raise equity capital for their growth and expansion.

The State Bank of India (SBI), ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank would have to comply with additional capital requirement norms by 1st April 2019 as the banks continue to be in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)'s list of Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) for 2018. D-SIBs are required to maintain higher capital as compared to other banks. It means that these banks are too big to fail and failure of any of these banks will have cascading effect on Indian financial system. The D-SIB framework requires the RBI to disclose the names of banks designated as D-SIBs starting from 2015 and place these banks in appropriate buckets depending upon their Systemic Importance Scores (SISs). SIBs are subjected to higher levels of supervision so as to prevent disruption in financial services in the event of any failure.

The government has decided to infuse a capital of 5,042 crore rupees into state-owned Bank of Baroda ahead of its merger with two other public sector lenders Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank,with Bank of Baroda which would be effective from 1st April 2019.With this initiative, the share price of Bank of Baroda rose 6.21% to 129.10 compared to the previous close of 121.55 on BSE (Bombay Stock Exchange).According to the Scheme of Amalgamation, shareholders of Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank will get 402 equity shares and 110 equity shares of BoB respectively for every 1,000 shares held.

India's largest bank State Bank of India has moved to a new interest rate regime on large savings account deposits as well as short-term loans. Earlier, SBI had announced that it will link its interest rate on savings account with a balance above Rs1 lakh and short-term loans like overdraft and cash credit facility to Reserve Bank of India's repo rate, effective 1 May 2019. The interest rates on large SBI savings account deposits and interest rate on some short-term loans will automatically change as and when RBI changes its repo rate. This will help in better transmission of RBI's policy rates into the banking system.

Kotak Mahindra Bank is the first debit card based authentication solution on NPCI's (National Payments Corporation of India) e-Mandate (electronic mandate) API (Application Program Interface) platform first ever Destination Bank to go live with both Net Banking and Debit Card-based e-mandate authentication. The main objective of this initiative is to enable Kotak customers to create electronic mandates (similar to the former eNACH with Aadhaar + OTP) (eNACH- Electronic National Automated Clearing House; OTP- One Time Password) via both debit card and net banking provision. As API based e-mandates are customer-friendly, fast, frictionless and paperless, the initiative would help in making its customers' lives hassle free for handling recurring payments.