EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Axis Bank’s acquisition of Citibank India’s consumer finance division has been applauded by the stock market, and the bank has outperformed Nifty-50 and the Bank Nifty since the announcement.
However, Axis Bank shareholders need to be more cautious about whether the acquisition will deliver the returns that the...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Many cases of mis-selling by ICICI Prudential Life (IPru Life) have been highlighted by this analyst since 2018 (also here and here). The company has responded by highlighting the high and improving persistency ratios (proportion of business that is retained from the business underwritten, measured in terms...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The argument made at the time of opening up the life insurance sector and allowing the private sector was that doing so would increase life insurance penetration (life premium/GDP) and thereby increase long term savings, which would flow into infrastructure investments (which are inherently long-term). But despite...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. In order to protect its customers from mis-selling, ICICI Bank ceased the selling of traditional par and non-par life insurance policies even from its subsidiary, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance (IPru Life). However, the bank continued to sell Unit Linked Insurance Policies (ULIPs). Sadly, feedback from ICICI Bank...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The Mint newspaper broke a news story on February 15, 2022 exposing how, in June 2019, RBL Bank had disbursed a high-risk loan to Sintex-BAPL. Thereafter Sintex-BAPL lent the bulk of those funds to group company Sintex Industries which enabled it to repay a Rs 2.8 bn...
It is difficult to read the SEBI's scathing order and not wonder what on earth the NSE board was doing.
In Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, Akela, the lone grey wolf leader, exhorts the pack to “look well” upon the cubs who are to be inducted into the pack as their own....
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. In the ongoing Indusind Bank microfinance saga, we earlier learned of a "technical glitch" whereby the bank generously disbursed loans to customers without their consent. Now comes the bank’s claim of a "procedural lapse" whereby the bank received repayments of large numbers of loans, and disbursed new...
An account of K.R. Shenoy's life gives us glimpses of a significant phase of Indian banking, one which had far more dynamism than it usually gets credit for.
Hemindra Hazari
The laterite soil of the district of Dakshina Kannada – or ‘south Canara’ as it was referred to before Independence –...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. The toxicity in Axis Bank’s work culture which this analyst has been highlighting (here and here) was recently confirmed by Ravi Narayanan, Group Executive - in-charge of retail liabilities, branch banking and products. As disclosed by ‘Madanlal Dahariya’, a pseudonym used by a bank whistle-blower on Twitter,...
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY. Xmas festivities were disrupted when RBL Bank dropped a bombshell on the stock exchanges. It informed the public that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under Section 36AB of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, had appointed Yogesh K Dayal (Chief General Manager, RBI) as an additional director....
