Banking Statistics often throw up interesting statistics. Going through the latest "Quarterly Statistics of Credit and Deposits” provided by the RBI throws some light on the banking system in the country.

Mumbai and Delhi account for 30% of all deposits and 38% of all credit

Yes, it’s true that many companies are headquartered here. But it’s incredible how much the system is skewed towards them.

These two cities – they have about 40 million people, about 4% of India’s population – are 1/3d of India’s banking system.

You can look at this information in many ways. A more granular view shows that just South Mumbai which probably has about 5 million residents – the area south of Bandra, Sion and Wadala, has combined deposits of 8.8 trillion rupees.

Total Bank deposits in South Mumbai are greater than total deposits in all branches of all banks in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand, *combined*.

Bombay is huge. It has 12 trillion rupees in deposits and 11 trillion in credit. Second comes Delhi with around Rs. 7 trillion each. A distant third and fourth are Uttar Pradesh with 4.4 and 4.2 trillion respectively (in deposits). 

Credit Deposit Ratios are Skewed ; …

Posted in Banks, Charts, Credit Repair, DataViz Comments Off

On The Daily Show, Helaine Olen, who wrote the book "Pound Foolish", talks about the way personal finance gurus tend to tell us about all these things and yet, they’re all still end up leaving us less informed than before. And asks why we should need to worry about retirement if we work hard. (HT: [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, Humour Comments Off

Cobrapost has an “expose” on how employees of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have been revealed as “blatantly running a huge Nation-Wide Money Laundering Racket”. They have a number of videos taken by a spy-camera, with the modus operandi being: Reporter goes to a bank branch Says that he represents a politician who [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, Suckered Comments Off

RBI has introduced new regulations on Feb 28, 2013 that mandate changes to all credit and debit cards issued by Indian banks. All these are applicable from Jun 30, 2013. All new credit and debit cards will only be valid in India, except if you specifically ask for international use. This is a no-brainer and [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, Startups Comments Off

It’s finally here. RBI has announced guidelines for new private sector banks. Phew. The first paragraph says why I’m thankful: Over the last two decades, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) licensed twelve banks in the private sector. This happened in two phases. Ten banks were licensed on the basis of guidelines issued in January [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, RBI Comments Off

Two people in my family received a registered post from Citibank when we weren’t around; and knowing Citibank I was sure something bad was going on, so we went to the post office pronto and fetched two letters. Both of them told us that: a) From March 1, their Citibank Suvidha Accounts would no longer [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair Comments Off

RBI has, in its draft guidelines, made it more difficult for banks to restructure loans. (See: What is loan restructuring?) Suggested in the guidelines are: Two months from now, from March 2013, banks will have to provision for 5% of restructured loans. The current provisioning need is 2.75%. This applies to new restructured loans that [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, RBI Comments Off

In response to buyers not being able to afford property and thus not allowing builders to buy more Bentleys*, the Finance Ministry has asked RBI to consider making housing a part of the "infra" sector, which will help to increase price even more. The finance ministry has asked the Reserve Bank to consider giving infrastructure [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, Loans, RBI, RealEstate Comments Off

Bank Credit growth as of October 5 has slumped to 15.9%, which is close to a near term low. Bank credit is all the credit that isn’t to the government, so it really means private lending (including to public sector enterprises). . In the longer term, we can see how much credit growth has been [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, Macro Comments Off

In a notification, RBI has mandated that Banks with core banking systems (that is, most banks) must offer cheques that will be payable at par (that is, not intra-city or inter-city collection charges) for all their customers in applicable branches. 3. On a review of the practice followed by banks in this regard, it has [...]

Posted in Banks, Credit Repair, RBI Comments Off