Issue: 1359
· IOB plans wealth management
foray next financial year.
· Sebi extends compliance
deadline for debenture trustees till April 2027.
· Shaktikanta Das pitches for
bigger banks, deeper corporate bond market.
· Still have 600 mn users left
to acquire on UPI: PhonePe chief Sameer Nigam.
· No intention to increase
ethanol blending in fuel beyond 20%: Hardeep Puri.
· Anthropic IPO uses
'catastrophic' 10 times on AI risks.
India’s crude basket price
tops $120 a barrel amid West Asia war: India’s average crude oil import basket price rose
by almost 4 per cent month-on-month (M-o-M) in October to surpass the $120 per
barrel mark as the conflict in West Asia exacerbated geopolitical uncertainty
and pushed up marine insurance premiums and freight rates. The average crude
oil price for Indian basket stood at $120.46 per barrel till October 26,
against $116.77 per barrel in September and $90.19 a barrel in August 2026. The
current October monthly average price is the highest in 14 years since March
2012 ($123.61 per barrel). The crude oil Indian basket price on October 26
stood at $123.72 a barrel.
(Business Line)
RBI Governor urges States
to onboard onto ULI, utilise Programmable CBDC for Direct Benefit Transfers: Reserve Bank of India Governor
Sanjay Malhotra on Tuesday urged the States to onboard onto the Unified Lending
Interface (ULI) and utilise Programmable Central Bank Digital Currency (P-CBDC)
for Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT). It may be pertinent to mention here that
Deputy Governor Rohit Jain, in the August 5, 2026, post-monetary policy press
conference, noted that a lot of interest is being shown by different State
Governments to use the CBDC and the ULI for different schemes and that the
central bank is in constant dialogue with them to increase their usage. ULI
enables lending institutions to offer frictionless, end-to-end digital credit
by leveraging consent based data and related services. The programmability
feature of CBDC serves as a key enabler for financial inclusion by ensuring
delivery of funds to the targeted user.
(Business Line)
Insurance must grow 1.5-2x
faster than GDP: Irdai chief Ajay Seth: India’s insurance sector must
grow 1.5-2 times faster than the economy over the next 10-15 years, requiring
fundamental changes in claims management, product transparency and
distribution, said Ajay Seth, Chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and
Development Authority of India (Irdai), at the Business Standard BFSI Insight
Summit. Life insurance is growing at
about 10 per cent, broadly in line with nominal economic growth, while general
insurance is expanding at 1.3 times the economy’s rate, driven largely by
health insurance. Rising customer dissatisfaction in health insurance, however,
underscores the need to improve policyholder experience, Seth said.
(Business Standard)
PhonePe launches Tatkal
NPS, lets users open pension accounts for Rs.250: PhonePe on Tuesday launched
‘Tatkal NPS’ on its platform, allowing users to open a National Pension System
account digitally in minutes with an initial contribution as low as Rs.250. The
service is live in partnership with select leading banks, with the company
saying it plans to expand banking coverage over time. The feature leverages
Tatkal NPS, a framework developed by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development
Authority (PFRDA), which allows existing bank KYC data to be reused via an OTP.
This removes the need for fresh document uploads, enabling users to generate a
Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN) entirely within the PhonePe app.
(Business Line)
Bank of Baroda’s NBFC
subsidiary commences operations: bob Securities & Giltedge
Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bank of Baroda (BoB), has commenced business
as a non-deposit taking NBFC. BoB, in a statement, said this marks an important
milestone in its strategy to strengthen its presence in government securities
and debt capital markets. The public sector bank said the launch of the NBFC
subsidiary is in line with its vision of strengthening the BoB Group through
specialised capabilities, creating scale across businesses and building a
diversified financial services institution.
(Business Line)
Credit card additions hit
second-highest monthly level in 2026 as banks gear up for festive season: Indian lenders, led by HDFC
Bank and Axis Bank, added 1.26 million net credit cards in September, the
second-highest monthly addition this calendar year, as financiers expanded card
portfolios ahead of the prime festive season, latest Reserve Bank of India
(RBI) data showed. July was only marginally ahead
in net additions, at 1.27 million.
(Economic Times)
Regional rural banks to set up cybersecurity centres, develop
threat intel: Regional
rural banks are set to improve their cyber security through the establishment
of cyber security operations centres. They will also develop capabilities for
vulnerability assessments and incident response as part of the reform agenda.
The Financial Stability and Development Council plans to enhance cyber security
measures following previous ransomware attacks. New initiatives will include
implementing enterprise data warehouse solutions for better data management and
reporting.
(Economic Times)
Shaktikanta Das urges BFSI
sector to lead infrastructure, high-tech manufacturing funding: Shaktikanta Das highlighted
the essential role of the BFSI sector in financing infrastructure and new
manufacturing. He emphasized the need for funding micro, small and medium
enterprises as well as agriculture. Das proposed utilizing digital financial
channels for efficient credit underwriting and financial inclusion. The segment
must adapt to support next-gen Digital Public Infrastructure and sustainable
finance.
(Economic Times)
DPIIT advances trust-based
governance to ease business regulations across India: The Department for Promotion of Industry and
Internal Trade (DPIIT), under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is
advancing a shift from a permission-based regulatory system to trust-based
governance through reforms aimed at reducing business compliance, supporting
startups, attracting investment and simplifying regulatory approvals. According to an official statement,
the government has reduced 47,957 compliance requirements across Central
Ministries and States and Union Territories (UTs). Of these, 22,290 have been
digitised, 16,141 simplified, 5,255 decriminalised and 4,271 eliminated.
(Economic Times)
Govt may ease FDI paperwork
for entities with up to 10% LBC ownership: The government is considering easing paperwork
under Press Note 2 of 2026 for entities looking to invest in India that have
non-controlling land-bordering country (LBC) ownership of up to 10 per cent, an
official said. The Union Cabinet approved the easing of foreign direct
investment (FDI) norms in March to allow investment through the automatic route
from entities based in any other country with non-controlling ownership of less
than 10 per cent by companies based in land-bordering countries. However,
government approval would be required if an LBC company owns a controlling
stake in the investment firm.
(Business Standard)
AI poses new risks, makes
assessment more complex: General insurers: Cyberattacks that can trigger
losses across multiple businesses simultaneously are emerging as a major
challenge for general insurers with artificial intelligence (AI) creating new
vulnerabilities and making risks harder to assess, industry executives said at
the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit 2026. Unlike conventional risks,
cyber incidents can spread across geographies through shared technology systems
and service providers. These can expose insurers to multiple claims from a
single event.The potential for such losses makes it difficult to estimate
exposure, price policies and determine how much risk insurers can retain.
(Business Standard)
SEBI extends deadline for
debenture trustees to separate non-regulated businesses by six months: The Securities and Exchange Board of India
(SEBI) has extended the deadline for debenture trustees to comply with
guidelines requiring activities not regulated by the market regulator to be
housed in separate business units by six months to April 27, 2027. Debenture trustees act as
intermediaries between companies that raise money by issuing debt securities
and investors who buy them. They monitor whether issuers meet their obligations
and protect the interests of debenture holders, including by ensuring
compliance with the terms of the issue and taking action in case of defaults. A circular issued on
Tuesday gives debenture trustees (DTs) additional time to establish the systems
and processes needed to implement the separate business unit (SBU) framework.
The earlier deadline was October 27, 2026.
(Moneycontrol)
Dynamic pricing's
unacceptable in insurance, big payouts erode value: IRDAI chief Ajay Seth: The insurance industry came in for yet another
round of censuring by the regulator for its sales practices as chairman Ajay
Seth said dynamic pricing like in airlines is unacceptable and that huge sales
commissions erode the value for policy holders. "Dynamic pricing works in the airline industry,
not in insurance," Ajay Seth, chairman, IRDAI said at a financial industry
summit. "The basic principle of any digital platform is come and compare
our price without any personal details.
(Economic Times)
PFRDA chief S Ramann wants
to plug NPS into corporate payroll systems: S Ramann, Chairperson of the Pension Fund
Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), on Tuesday called for integrating
National Pension System (NPS) contributions into corporate payrolls, enabling
employees to save for retirement through salary deductions alongside Employees’
Provident Fund (EPF) contributions. Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight
Summit here, Ramann said the move would require relatively minor modifications
to existing human resource management software (HRMS), not an overhaul of
payroll infrastructure.“If we can run UPI (Unified Payments Interface) for 700
or 800 million people in our country, this is child’s play,” Ramann said. “It
is a matter of the HR team in a particular corporate looking at a patch in
their HRMS software, which simply says you can deduct NPS.”
(Business Standard)
SPECIALISED INVESTMENT FUND (SIF)
·
A Specialised Investment Fund
(SIF) is a SEBI-regulated investment category in India that bridges the gap
between traditional mutual funds and Portfolio Management Services (PMS).
Requiring a minimum investment of ?10 lakh, SIFs operate within the mutual fund
framework while granting fund managers greater flexibility to deploy advanced
strategies such as long-short equity, sector rotation, dynamic asset
allocation, and limited unhedged derivative short exposure.
·
Designed for high-net-worth
and experienced investors, these funds offer a middle ground of portfolio
agility without the higher entry thresholds of PMS or alternative investment
funds.
RBI KEY RATES
Repo
Rate: 5.50%
SDF:
5.25%
MSF
/Bank Rate: 5.75%
CRR:
3.00%
SLR:
18.00%
FOREX RATES (RBI REF. RATE)
INR
/ 1 USD : 95.1623
INR
/ 1 GBP : 126.8688
INR
/ 1 EUR : 106.2668
INR
/100 JPY: 60.3300
EQUITY INDEX
Sensex:
73598.67 (-8.08)
NIFTY:
22749.75 (-3.45)
Bnk NIFTY: 53974.90 (-381.80)
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