Weekly News

Arpit Gupta

Economic Times

Pensioners' woes double, but

depositors cry less.

Complaints from pensioners have almost doubled in a year’s

time while those from depositors have halved and credit card

and direct selling agents have come down.

Banks received as many as 4,831 complaints from

pensioners against 2,916 a year ago while depositors’

complaints have reduced from 6,708 to 3,681 in 2010-11.

Banking ombudsmen received a total of 79,266 complaints

compared with 69,117 in the previous year, up 14.7%.

Looking forward, a customer service rating based approach

with quantitative parameters ultimately linked to its capital

can serve such a purpose.

The report shows that the share of complaints have declined fornew private banks and foreign banks to 15.1% from 17.5% ayear ago.

However, it should be noted that the share of banking assets offoreign lenders declined from 7.2% from 8.5% last year whilethat of new private banks in India fell from 15.2% to 14.6% ayear ago.

The share of complaints from nationalised banks, PSU banks,other than the SBI group, was almost one-fourth against 22.4%a year ago.

Chennai had the highest number of complaints at 12,727 against10,381 a year ago, followed by New Delhi at 12,045 against10,473 the previous year. Mumbai recorded 10,558 complaintsagainst 9,631 a year ago.

RBI doubles online money transfer

limit via RTGS to Rs 2 lakh. The Reserve Bank has doubled the threshold limit for electronic

fund transfers using the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS)system to Rs 2 lakh with effect from November 15.

It has been decided to increase the threshold limit for RTGStransactions from the present limit of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.

The RTGS system facilitates high-value transfers of money fromone bank to another on a real-time and gross basis.

The central bank said the RTGS system has witnessedtremendous growth in terms of both transaction volumes andvalues since inception in March, 2004.

With the increased number of electronic paymenttransactions, it has become expedient to position the IndianRTGS system primarily for processing and settling largevalue payment orders," the RBI had said in its secondquarter monetary policy review.

The RBI has revised the service charges for fund transfersthrough the NEFT mode. Fund transfers up to Rs 1 lakh willcontinue to attract a service charge of Rs 5.

RBS plans to triple wealth management business in India

The Royal Bank of Scotland will use its banking licence to

provide banking services to the well-heeled under its private

banking division after it divests its retail and commercial business.

Even as the UK bank is in talks to sell the retail business of

erstwhile ABN Amro, RBS is drawing up plans to triple its wealth

management business in India.

RBS is currently in talks to divest its commercial and retail

business in India to HSBC .

The sale is a part of the bank’s effort to cut down its size globally.

But the UK bank is growing its private banking business which

targets the rich with liquid assets equivalent of at least $1 million.

One of RBS’ retained business in India is global

transaction services, which has a full-fledged platform to

offer banking services, which goes all the way from

providing checking accounts, deposits and other cash

management services to NRI deposits.

To expand its suite of services, the bank plans to bring in

expertise on philanthropy and family business to India

shortly.

RBS private banking is not a new bank, it is the new

name of an existing bank that has been enhanced.

The proposed divestment of the retail and commercial

banking business would not have impact of the success

of RBS private banking