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Sachin Chaturvedi wears many hats. He is the director general of think tank RIS and is also on the RBI's central board. He was also part of the internal working group (IWG) set up by the RBI to revisit bank licensing norms. In an interview with TOI, he explains the thinking behind the recommendations. Excerpts:A lot of attention is currently focused on the entry of the corporate sector into banking. Did you expect this kind of a reaction?The reactions are on two or three different planes. One is focusing on the entry of large corporate houses. There are quite a few reactions that are welcoming the new scope for capital infusion in the banking sector, they are welcoming the efforts on enriched regulatory architecture and they are also trying to bring out the fact that the report has not just covered the architecture for universal banks but also the mechanisms needed for differentiated banks like small finance banks and payments banks. There is a need for a mix of institutional archi...

MUMBAI: India Inc has quietly progressed on the gender diversity front in spite of the pandemic. Engineering firm ABB, Hindustan Zinc (HZL), Sun Life Asia Service Center (ASC) and leading direct selling FMCG major Amway have improved upon their gender diversity numbers significantly this year through proactive hiring of women candidates.Zurich-based ABB, which underwent a transformation from a power and manufacturing company to a technology and automation company two years ago, has seen its diversity numbers increase to 14% in October this year from 9% in 2018. A traditional set-up in manufacturing can make it extremely challenging for women to consider this segment as a career option. ABB India CHRO Raman Kumar Singh said it’s challenging to fill up positions with a woman candidate due to a smaller pool of women in manufacturing. “A big inflection point for us was to bring a shift in thinking. Once we have communicated that a certain role can be done by a woman, we seek more time to l...

BENGALURU: With Jan Dhan accounts and the government’s direct benefit transfers (DBT), ATM usage has gone up in rural areas. This is most clearly seen by the trend of increased usage of ‘white-label operators’ ATMs, which are used only in rural and remote parts of the country. From just 2 per cent of total ATM transactions in India in 2014, these white-label ATMs now make up 12 per cent of total transactions.ATM players say that the main reason for this is that over seven years, the number of debit cards in India has doubled to 86 crore as of September 2020. And of those cards, 35 per cent (30 crore) are RuPay ones issued to PM Jan Dhan Yojana accounts. 79482864“We are seeing rural demand growing despite the pandemic. One of the reasons is that the rural economy has not been as severely impacted as the urban one with the lockdown,” says K Srinivas, CEO, BTI Payments, a white-label ATM operator. The government’s assistance to BPL workers during the pandemic is also held to have helped i...

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is likely to keep interest rates unchanged and reiterate its accommodative stance in this week’s monetary policy review, buoyed by good news on the economic front, said investors and traders. But it could also cite concerns about inflation, which has stubbornly remained above the prescribed target range. The monetary policy committee (MPC) is scheduled to meet on December 2-4.Bankers will watch out for any guidance on how the RBI plans to manage the record excess liquidity in the financial system, which has distorted market conditions and led to a drop in short-term rates. Some companies are borrowing at rates lower than the RBI benchmark.“Liquidity is in an excess territory and frankly gone out of hand and could lead to inflation in the future,” said DBS Bank head of treasury Ashish Vaidya. “A part of this is due to the dollar buying by the RBI which has infused cash into the system.”79483825‘Downside Risks to Growth Remain’“It will help if they...

Large lenders may soon impress upon the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) the need to tweak a rule to make it easier to rejig loans to companies impacted by the pandemic-induced slowdown. In several cases, such a change will spare companies hit by Covid-19 the stigma attached to a nonperforming asset (NPA) as well lower provisioning for banks. This would call for recognising the months between the ‘invocation of the resolution framework’ (for one-time restructuring of a loan) and its ‘implementation’ as a standstill period.“This may help more banks as well as borrowers to take up one-time restructuring of loans… It will be all the more relevant once the Supreme Court lifts the stay on classification of loan assets,” a senior banker told ET.According to the regulations, the loan resolution process announced by RBI to address Covid-related stress is invoked when lenders representing 75% by value and 60% by number agree to restructure a loan. Unlike normal restructuring under earlier regulation...

NEW DELHI: The Drugs Controller General of India and the institutional ethics committee at the implementation site are investigating if the adverse event as claimed to have been suffered by a COVID-19 vaccine trial participant in Chennai are related to the shot administered to him.A 40-year-old Chennai-based business consultant, who was a volunteer for the third phase of the vaccine trial conducted by Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII), has sought Rs 5 crore compensation for allegedly suffering serious neurological and psychological symptoms after taking the dose.He was administered the shot at Chennai's Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER), one of the trial sites on October 1.A law firm on his behalf has now sent a legal notice to Director General, ICMR, Drugs Controller General of India, Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation, CEO, Astra Zeneca UK, Professor Andrew Pollard, Chief Investigator, Oxford Vaccine Trial and Vice Chancellor of ...

New Delhi: Air India is planning to operate non-stop flights on the Chennai-London route from January next year, making Tamil Nadu's capital the ninth city to be connected with the British capital. Air India is currently operating non-stop flights to London from Delhi (seven flights a week), Mumbai (four flights a week), Kochi (three flights a week), Ahmedabad (two flights a week), Bengaluru (two flights a week), Goa (two flights a week), Kolkata (one flight a week) and Amritsar (one flight a week), an airline spokesperson told . Asked how has been the occupancy rate in its London flights after the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the spokesperson said the "load factors have been generally good". "Some of the stations like Delhi, Kochi, Goa and Ahmedabad have seen quite a heavy demand (for London flights)," the spokesperson said. "We have plans to commence direct operations between Chennai and London from January, 2021," the spokesperson said. Scheduled i...