Publication: Dvara Research

RBI recently released the operating guidelines for the Small Finance banks and Payments Banks on October 6, 2016. To take stock of these, we have put together a brief comparison of the regulatory requirements of these banks against those for universal banks.

Banks in India, whether large or small, have traditionally been required to adopt similar strategies to expanding their banking businesses.

For the first time, the majority of Indian women have been financially included. Fresh data show that the proportion of Indian women with individual accounts in formal financial institutions (primarily banks) reached 61% in 2015, a sharp increase from 48% in 2014, lagging men by only eight percentage points.

Taking a significant step towards curbing illegal collection of deposits by unauthorized and illegal entities, RBI recently set up a website named ‘Sachet’ (Alert).

Both financial inclusion and financial stability are high on international policy makers’ agenda. For instance, the G-20 has called for global commitments to both advancing financial inclusion (the Maya Declaration and the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion) and enhancing financial stability (the Financial Stability Board, Basel III Implementation, and other regulatory reforms).

Why is malnutrition in India’s central belt, which includes the state of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, so high and so persistent despite relatively high rates of income growth?

In a recent report by Wharton Social Impact Initiative & Knowledge@Wharton on Innovative Finance and the various forms it has taken, the report highlights among others, the multi-originator securitization (MOSEC) transaction that was first pioneered by IFMR Capital.

There has been a strong national imperative to move towards a “cashless” economy in India[1]. Despite a substantive impetus from public and private sector forces, the adoption and use of digital modes of payment in the country remains paltry[

I met today with the promoter and CEO of one of our newer Small Business Loan Originators and visited some of their end borrowers in Bombay.

In this blog post we feature a conversation between Bama Balakrishnan, CRO, IFMR Capital and Kalpana Pandey, CEO & Managing Director, CRIF High Mark. CRIF High Mark is one of the four credit bureaus that operates in the country.