Banking and Financial Awareness May 2019- Week III

The central board of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has approved the creation of a specialized supervisory and regulatory structure for urban cooperative banks, commercial banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
The decision is based on the recommendations of an internal committee.
RBI is also looking to introduce risk-based supervision for NBFCs and urban cooperative banks
A few days ago, RBI also asked NBFCs with assets of more than Rs.5,000 crore to appoint chief risk officers (CRO)

In January, the Reserve Bank of India had set up the five-member panel under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani with a view to encouraging digitisation of payments and enhance financial inclusion through digitisation.
The panel submitted its report to the RBI to examine the recommendations of the committee and will fit the action points in its Payment Systems Vision 2021 for implementation.

World Bank and Commonwealth Bank (CBA) have enabled secondary market trading recorded on the blockchain for bond-i (blockchain operated new debt instrument).
It will be the first bond whose issuance and trading are recorded using distributed ledger technologies.
bondi-i was issued in August 2018, and it was the world’s first bond to be created, allocated, transferred and managed through its life cycle using distributed ledger technology.
CBA was the sole arranger for the bond.

The Reserve Bank of India told non-banking finance companies with assets size of over Rs 5000 crore to appoint a chief risk officer to improve standards of their risk management.
RBI notified NBFCs to ensure the independence of their CRO.
The CRO shall be a senior official in the hierarchy of an NBFC and shall have professional qualification/ experience in the area of risk management.
The CRO shall not have any reporting relationship with the business verticals of the NBFC.
The CRO shall not be given any business targets.

HDFC Capital Advisors launched a new initiative called 'HDFC Affordable Real Estate and Technology Program (HeART).
It aims to mentor, partner and invest in real estate technology companies that drive innovation and efficiencies within the affordable housing ecosystem.
As part of the HeART initiative, HDFC Capital Advisors will provide a platform to real estate technology companies with innovative products aimed at creating efficiencies and lowering costs in each part of the development cycle of real estate projects.

To give a boost to digital lending, Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) has put together a pilot scheme to extend financial assistance of up to Rs.10 crore to new-age fintech non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) engaged in financing small businesses and other income-generating activities.
SIDBI set the exposure cap for lending to a single new-age fintech NBFC at 30% of NOF of the new-age fintech NBFC, subject to maximum cap of Rs 10 crore.
Fintech NBFCs are digital loan companies having minimum capital risk-weighted assets ratio of 15%.
Their non-performing assets should be less than or equal to 4%.

Bombay Stock Exchange launched ‘BSE StAR MF‘ app to enable more participation and aid, mutual fund distributors, to accelerate transactions process.
The app ploads mandate for SIPs, generates the basket of multiple orders, tracks and allows the distributor to analyse his business at his fingertip