Page 6 - BANKING FINANCE JUNE 2016

P. 6

BANK UPDATE

Banks in priority sector will benefit from RBI guidelines: Police meets bank repre-
sentatives to embark
Moody
upon online fraud
Banks with significant gaps in meeting priority sector loan requirement will ben-
efit from Reserve Bank's guidelines for priority sector Kolkata Police met representatives of
lending certificates, Moody's said. The apex bank had re- 40 bank branches in Kolkata and sub-
leased guidelines for priority sector lending certificates urbs at Lalbazar on to discuss ways
(PSLC), whereby banks can buy and sell such credits to to tackle the growing incidence of
manage their priority sector lending requirements. online fraud.

"This is credit positive for banks without expertise in making priority sector loans Officers said the meeting's special fo-
because it allows them to focus on their strengths and purchase credits from cus was on customers falling prey to
banks with expertise in making such loans, instead of diverting their own re- fraudsters impersonating as bank of-
sources towards meeting priority sector lending targets," a Moody's Credit Out- ficials over the phone and giving
look report said. away their debit and credit card de-
tails.
Few overdrafts and fewer insurance claims in PMJDY
"We have advised all banks to start
With the opening of more than 215 mil- lated on the basis of average deposit a 24-hour helpline to answer all que-
lion accounts in less than two years, the in the last three months. On the basis ries of the customers, including the
Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana has of this, each branch is informed about status of their cards," an officer at
been a roaring success, at the number of eligible accounts and Lalbazar Police Station said.
least on paper.
also the amount to be of- The banks have also been advised to
However, according to data fered to each of them. The explore the possibility of delaying
on the official website of the amount ranges from Rs 500 online transfer of money by an hour
scheme, of the 215 million to Rs 5,000, most of them to prevent fraud. "According to the
new accounts opened, only near the lower end," said a proposal, a customer initiating the
1.8 million have availed of banker. transfer will get a text message say-
overdraft facilities. That works out to ing the transaction has started. The
just 0.8 per cent of the accounts opened The other benefit of the Jan actual transfer will happen after an
under the scheme. An amount of Rs Dhan Yojana was two insurance hour. In case of a fraudulent trans-
255 crore was made available as OD to schemes offered at a premium of Rs 12 action, the customer will have an
these beneficiaries. That works to an and Rs 330, respectively. On this count hour to get it stopped," an officer
average of slightly more than Rs 1,400 too, data show that the scheme is yet said.
for every account, way less than the to take off. According to available
promised OD of Rs 5,000. data, under the death claims, only Officers in the anti-bank fraud sec-
2,593 cases have been reported so far. tion of the city police said there were
"The amount of OD offered is calcu- Of these, 2,233 claims have been multiple rackets that are trying to
settled and 344 rejected. dupe people into divulging their
credit/debit card numbers. The
Retail loan may lead to surge in consumer debt level fraudsters, posing as bank officials,
tell their intended victims that
The surge of growth in retail loans, especially credit card loans, may lead to their cards had been blocked and ask
consumer debt levels similar to the pre-2008 crisis, according to State Bank of for the numbers to get them un-
India (SBI), the country's largest lender in the country. locked.

"The current increase in bank lending has mostly been to the personal loan
segment. Moreover, within personal loans, it is the credit card loan segment
that is rising rapidly, indicating a rise in consumer indebtedness. Household debt
as measured by credit outstanding per credit card in India has been rising even
in real terms (after being adjusted for inflation)," said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief
economic adviser, SBI.

6 | 2016 | JUNE | BANKING FINANCE

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