REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri Getting an unsecured personal loan has become easier than ever in India. Lending practices have eased over the past two or three years, experts say, due to three reasons: more banks pursuing retail customers as corporate loans turn soar, proliferation of non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), and the advent of online lending platforms (fintech companies) catering mostly to urban millennials. A low credit score is no longer a major bugbear for lenders as they vet...

REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas A high-level independent probe has established that Chanda Kochhar, former chief of ICICI Bank, was guilty of violating the code of conduct at India’s second-biggest private lender. Yesterday (Jan. 30), the Justice BN Srikrishna committee appointed by the bank last May submitted a report in which it accused Kochhar of nepotism. Immediately, the trailblazing banker’s resignation last October, which itself had followed months of extended leave, was treated as...

The nepotism scandal at India’s ICICI Bank, which brought to pass the downfall of its celebrated former chieftain Chanda Kochhar, just got murkier. Not only has the former CEO of India’s second-largest private lender been pulled deeper into the scandal, but more high-profile names have also been drawn in. This includes Kochhar’s immediate successor, Sandeep Bakhshi, besides her immediate predecessor, KV Kamath, one of the leading figures of India Inc. On Jan. 24, India’s premier investigating...

The 200-year legacy of India’s insurance industry is a paradox, given its dismally low penetration levels in the country. Indians remain woefully unprotected from life’s vagaries. In the event of the death of an earning member, an average Indian has only around 8% of what may be required to protect his or her family from financial shock, according to a report by IndiaSpend, a data-driven public interest journalism initiative. “This is much lower than the insurance coverage adequacy of 44% in...

When the over 150-year-old US investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust in September 2008, it sparked a global financial crisis and a gradual erosion of faith in public institutions, particularly banks. The country’s Lehman-like moment came ten years later, in 2018, as a series of events shook its banking system and people’s faith in it. These events ranged from the resignation of the central bank governor to the unearthing of a giant fraud at a major state-run bank. The private sector banks...