Tag: bfsi

Time to clear the air on cryptos

Banking & Finance

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While the government has had mixed and probably even alternating stance on cryptocurrencies, the currency regulator RBI had been silent for a long time and, of late, has shared its concerns on cryptos with the government.

The securities regulator SEBI could be the ideal regulatory candidate if cryptos were to be treated as an asset class.

The Indian investor community has been euphoric about the instrument, despite noise that crypto investing could become illegal or taxed harshly. All this, when the issue of crypto was purportedly settled last year with the Supreme Court of India lifting the RBI’s crypto ban of 2018.

A to G of crypto

Arbitrary actions and reactions will continue as the financial industry has showcased so far. A few months ago, some banks stalled operations or pass-through of the crypto exchanges; purportedly, as the market guesses, to avoid irritating their regulator. The day there is clarity on how crypto would be seen under Indian law, and if it is for holding crypto as an asset, every BFSI and fintech would jump onto the bandwagon.

The banking sector’s lack of understanding of cryptos continues. It is more about understanding the liquidity of various cryptos available. As long as the rules bring clarity on what other information other than KYC would be needed, the sector can chug ahead.

Crypto consumers will stay invested probably until they get hurt by crypto falsehood or misleading investments. It is rightfully the RBI’s endeavour to have consumer protection in mind. But as we regulate the sector, we also have to move to a market-led economy, where, as long as the consumers get into an investment position without being mis-sold or forced to invest, the industry should not be ostracised.

It is also worthwhile to mention that the RBI is planning to launch its own CBDC (central bank digital currency). Debt leverage worry of the lending community will continue until they are allowed by the regulator. End-usage fears that cryptos could potentially be used for terror financing, etc., seem far-fetched, considering the granularity of its traceability. Interestingly, usage of gold or realty seems far in the wrong end of illegal funding.

Functionality of its core, which is blockchain, cannot be brushed away. It has tremendous usage and potential across public finance, banking and financial services; this could help build a secure financing backbone for the entire country as we seek to expand the inclusive-nature of our financial offerings.

The government’s stand cannot vacillate on policy matters without taking wide range of inputs, not just from a commercial angle but also from a deeper technological understanding if it can bring potential good. Let’s remember that our grandparents could not have imagined mobile-payments or transactions without seeing/touching the monies or writing a cheque. So let us not discount the emerging digital monies, for the short term notion of “not wanting it happen in my watch.”

Any asset class’ trade-worthiness and consequent liquidity is determined by a crucial factor: “trust”. Regulations can offer confidence around legality of the asset class and its usage, but cannot determine public acceptance or asset pricing. Regulations can surely offer consumer confidence and consumer protection if they are light-touch and use latest digital supervisory capabilities.

It is essential that the government does not give into knee-jerk reactions of the stakeholders, and takes a pragmatic call. It has displayed tremendous initiative by adopting digital across various facets including financial markets, e-governance, public outreach, etc. It should engage in depth with various stakeholders to understand how digital finance can be used for larger public good, and not give in to short-term worries and lack of capacity.

It’s a good sign that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has invited crypto industry players to hear their views on the opportunities and challenges. If our regulators take a leaf from this and invite multi-stakeholder discussions and seek inputs about the draft Bill, it would be a comforting exercise.

In the spirit of democratic transparency, it would be welcome if the ‘Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021’ is put in public domain, and comments sought.

The writer is corporate advisor and markets commentator

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HDFC Bank Q2 consolidated profit rises 18 pc to Rs 9,096 cr, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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HDFC Bank on Saturday reported an 18 per cent increase in its consolidated net profit at Rs 9,096 crore for the second quarter ended September 2021. The country’s biggest private sector lender had posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 7,703 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

Total consolidated income during the quarter under review rose to Rs 41,436.36 crore from Rs 38,438.47 crore in July-September 2020, HDFC Bank said in a statement.

On a standalone basis, after providing Rs 3,048.3 crore for taxation, it earned a net profit of Rs 8,834.3 crore, an increase of 17.6 per cent over the quarter ended September 30, 2020.

The bank had earned a net profit Rs 7,513.1 crore on standalone basis in the same quarter a year ago, the statement said.

Total income (standalone) grew to Rs 38,754.16 crore in the second quarter of FY2022 from Rs 36,069.42 crore in the year-ago quarter. PTI DP MKJ MKJ



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RBI revamps loan transfer and securtisation rules, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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The Reserve Bank has issued Master Direction on loan transfer, requiring banks and other lending institutions to have a comprehensive board-approved policy for such transactions.

Loan transfers are resorted to by lending institutions for various reasons, ranging from liquidity management, rebalancing their exposures or strategic sales. Also, a robust secondary market in loans will help in creating additional avenues for raising liquidity, the RBI said.

The provisions of the direction are applicable to banks, all non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), including housing finance companies (HFCs), NABARD, NHB, EXIM Bank, and SIDBI.

Minimum holding period

The Master Direction has also prescribed a minimum holding period for different categories of loans after which they shall become eligible for transfer.

“The lenders must put in place a comprehensive Board approved policy for transfer and acquisition of loan exposures under these guidelines.

“These guidelines must…lay down the minimum quantitative and qualitative standards relating to due diligence, valuation, requisite IT systems for capture, storage and management of data, risk management, periodic Board level oversight, etc,” said the Master Direction.

Draft guidelines on Reserve Bank of India (Transfer of Loan Exposures) Directions, 2021, were released for public comments in June last year.

The final direction has been prepared to take into account inter alia the comments received. The direction, the RBI said came into effect immediately.

As per the direction, “a loan transfer should result in immediate separation of the transferor from the risks and rewards associated with loans to the extent that the economic interest has been transferred”.

In case of any retained economic interest in the exposure by the transferor, the loan transfer agreement should specify the distribution of the principal and interest income from the transferred loan between the transferor and the transferee(s), it added.

‘Transferor’ means the entity which transfers the economic interest in a loan exposure, while ‘transferee’ refers to the entity to which the economic interest in a loan exposure is transferred.

It further said a transferor “cannot re-acquire” a loan exposure, either fully or partially, that had been transferred by the entity previously, except as a part of a resolution plan.

Further, “the transferee(s) should have the unfettered right to transfer or otherwise dispose of the loans free of any restraining condition to the extent of economic interest transferred to them”.

Loans not in default

The master direction also provides a procedure for the transfer of loans that are not in default.

Meanwhile, the RBI also issued Master Direction on the securitisation of standard assets to facilitate their repackaging into tradable securities with different risk profiles.

Observing that complicated and opaque securitisation structures could be undesirable from the point of view of financial stability, the RBI said, “Prudentially structured securitisation transactions can be an important facilitator in a well-functioning financial market in that it improves risk distribution and liquidity of lenders in originating fresh loan exposures”.

In its ‘Master Direction – Reserve Bank of India (Securitisation of Standard Assets) Directions, 2021’, the central bank has specified the Minimum Retention Requirement (MRR) for different classes of assets.

For underlying loans with an original maturity of 24 months or less, the MRR shall be 5 per cent of the book value of the loans being securitised. It will be 10 per cent for loans with an original maturity of more than 24 months.

In the case of residential mortgage-backed securities, the MRR for the originator shall be 5 per cent of the book value of the loans being securitised, irrespective of the original maturity.



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Rapid digitisation of banks invites cyber risks as well. What are the risks, and what should banks do?, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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-By Ishwari Chavan

The banking sector has always been victim of cyberattacks, and with COVID-19, it has become more vulnerable. Cyberattacks against banks and financial institutions across the globe increased to 238% between February 2020 and April 2020, according to VMware Carbon Black.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), over 2.9 lakh cyberattacks related to digital banking were reported in 2020. A total number of 1,59,761; 2,46,514 and 2,90,445 cyber security incidents related to digital banking were reported during 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively. These incidents included phishing attacks, network scanning and probing, viruses and website hacking.

Year Number of cyber security incidents
2018 1,59,761
2019 2,46,514
2020 2,90,445

Source: Indian Computer Emergency Response Team

“The kind of security threats that we see whether it is a remote mirroring of applications, localization of your data stores in your mobile, hijacking of your sessions, social engineering attacks, all of those are very easy things to do. You don’t need real hackers to do that, smart people can do this too. That’s what has happened in the banking sector where we’ve seen a lot of increase in fraud, whether it’s on the UPI side or the traditional payment side,” said Ramesh Lakshminarayan, chief information officer at HDFC Bank.

According to Heeral Sharma, senior cyber security advisor at McAfee, three challenges must be tackled to ensure cyber safety. First is the challenge of internal IT security, second is digitization of applications and of critical data such as payments and personally identifiable information (PII), and third are cloud native threats.

What are the risks?

More and more individuals are now accessing their bank accounts through banks’ mobile apps. Many of these apps, and even customers, tend to have minimal or no security, such as users keeping easy passwords or banks keeping minimum password checks for transactions.

“The cloud threats in the BFSI segment increased by 571%, which is huge. The reason is simple, the network boundaries are no longer defined. It’s all borderless. So the attackers have found out new ways to get in and penetrate at times even by using legitimate credentials.” said Sharma.

Cyber security infrastructure as a whole needs an upgrade. Banks need to rightfully utilise their cyber security budget to help advance their technology and detect all kinds of risks.

As banks have upgraded their cyber security, attackers have turned to shared banking systems and third-party networks to gain access. In case, these are not as protected, there is more risk for cyberattacks.

Even for cryptocurrency, hacks have become more advanced as the segment is still unsure on how to implement cyber security.

What should banks do?

Banks should prioritise investing in cybersecurity and build a resilient infrastructure, to address current cyber security threats and prepare for challenges in the future.

“When we talk about digital we talk about investments. Our investments will also go into the cybersecurity segment as we move towards digitization. There should not be any compromise as far as the data securities and the Data Protection Service securities are concerned,” said Upma Goel, chief financial officer at Ujjivan Small Finance Bank.

Sharma stressed on how data protection requires a completely different approach so that banks are aware on what’s happening in the cloud. “Data protection, threat protection and network security model all built in together will provide a better approach and also take care of the complexity in the multi state and collaborative environment,” she said.

“If you look at the entire security landscape, right from an employee experience to the customer experience to our own, huge disruptions are happening in the area,” Lakshminarayan said. Banks are required to reimagine some of their own technology and adapt to a three-year or four-year journey, he added.

The article is based on the panel discussion on: Fireside Chat on Bankers Chariot, Riding on Tech that took place at ETBFSI CXO conclave



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RBI extends curbs on UP-based People’s Co-operative Bank, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Mumbai, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended restrictions on People’s Co-operative Bank Limited, Kanpur, for a further period of three months from September 11 to December 10.

The bank has been under restrictions since June 10, 2020, through the directives issued under Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 (AACS).

“The validity of the directive, which was last extended up to September 10, 2021 has further been extended for a period of three months from September 11, 2021 to December 10, 2021 vide directive DOR.MON.D-35/12.28.059/2021-22 dated September 8, 2021 subject to review,” said an RBI statement on Saturday.

Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 gives the central bank power to give directions to banks and can take action, to prevent the affairs of any banking company being conducted in a manner detrimental to the interests of the depositors or in a manner prejudicial to the interests of the banking company.

As per the directives, the Kanpur-based co-operative bank has been barred from granting fresh loans and accepting deposits for six months without prior approval of the RBI, due to its weak financial position.

“In particular, no amount of the total balance across all savings bank or current account or any other account of a depositor may be allowed to be withdrawn,” the RBI had said in its statement on June 11, 2020, when it had imposed the restrictions.



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ICICI Bank customers can now pay dues of other credit cards on iMobile Pay app, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Customers of ICICI Bank can now pay and manage dues of their credit cards, of any bank, using the bank’s mobile application ‘iMobile Pay‘, the bank said in a release today.

Customers can add credit cards of any bank to the application, and then pay and manage their dues.

“With a large section of customers using multiple cards for their various needs, this new solution aims to help them decongest the process of their credit card bill payments,” said Bijith Bhaskar, head of digital channels and partnership at ICICI Bank.

Users can also set bill payment reminders of all the cards they have added, view payment history, share payment confirmation through WhatsApp, and manage and change due dates as per the billing cycle of their cards, the bank said in the release.

The bank has also provided a simple 4-step process to avail this new feature:

> Login to iMobile Pay and select ‘Cards and Forex’ section

> Go to ‘Other Bank Credit Card’

> Tap on ‘Add a card’ and enter the required details

> Authenticate the one time password (OTP) sent on the registered mobile number, and card will be added instantly

> Once the card is added, it can be viewed and managed under the ‘Other Bank Credit Card’ tab



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Chief Economic Advisor K V Subramanian, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Exhorting the Indian BFSI sector to make a mark globally, Chief Economic Advisor K V Subramanian has said India should have at least six banks in the global top 100.

“It is a matter of mindset now, the mindset has to be one where we are not happy with just being lions at home and lambs abroad, we have to be lions globally as well, Krishnamurthy Subramanian said, delivering the keynote address at ETBFSI Summit.

Stating that India has to become a big player in the BFSI space in the next decade, he said the sector must seek inspiration from IT, pharma & sports.

BFSI sector needs to have that hunger which will also help the Indian economy, Subramanian said, adding, “Five Chinese banks are in the top 100 global, Swedish banks, American banks. There is no reason why our banks cannot be in the top 20 either.”

Ruing that India has only one bank in the global top 100 — SBI at 55th position, he said for the size of the economy, India should have at least six banks in the global top 100, some in the top 10 or the top 20.

Drawing an analogy with cricket, he said the Indian BFSI sector appears like the Indian cricket team of the 1990s which could boast a lot of victories at home but had nothing noteworthy outside the shores, globally.

The sector has to aspire to become like a cricket team under Sourav Ganguly, Mahindra Singh Dhoni or Virat Kohli where they’re achieving global recognition.

“The BFSI sector has to start mattering globally, their aspirations need to be scaled up. Aspiration has to be set, given the aspiration that India has set for the economy itself.”

Fixing problems

The CEA said India’s BFSI sector has a quality and quantity problem which needs to be fixed, especially when the Prime Minister has outlined Rs 100 lakh crore infrastructure building apart from the National Infrastructure Pipeline.

“Infrastructure will actually require the BFSI sector to be able to participate and thereby learn how to do high-quality lending without suffering the problem of non-performing assets, crony lending, evergreening of loans, gold plating of loans, all the kind of problems that we have witnessed in the Indian financial sector over the last decade,” he said.

He said the country has large corporates and large borrowers who end up borrowing but not repaying, and yet many times banks actually end up giving credit to the defaulters as well.

Observing that on the credit side India is far behind, he said, “The ratio of credit to private credit to GDP at about 58% is one-third of the global average of, close to 170 per cent.”

He said the BFSI sector should avoid the phenomenon of accelerating credit, and braking when bad loans mount, if credit expansion has to happen in a sustained manner to push economic growth.

“It is very important for credit expansion to happen at a consistent pace without the usual accelerator brake phenomenon that has been the characteristic of the Indian financial sector ever since liberalisation where, when the economy starts doing well, credit expands significantly oftentimes in the process. The credit underwriting norms are relaxed, and as a result, the seeds for a crisis are sown during good times,” he said.

Leveraging tech, data analytics

Underscoring the importance of technology and data analytics, Subramanian said banks and financial institutions which were very efficiently leveraging data and analytics had much lower bad loans, and their balance sheet expansion did not come under pressure. “Those banks were also able to grow consistently, and thereby contribute to the economy. That is the objective that the Indian BFSI sector must have,” he said.

The CEA said a lot of the private sector banks have used data and analytics for retail lending, but the usage of the same is very low for large ticket lending and SME lending. “The Indian BFSI sector should hire far more engineer MBAs to bring this technology driven in banking,” he said.

“In BFSI sector leaders need to be those that are technologically very well drained not only to be able to come up with models for retail lending, but also models for large-ticket corporate lending,” Subramanian said.



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Companies don’t want to reveal loan details to public, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Starting August, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) made it mandatory for credit-rating agencies (CRAs) to disclose bank-wise term-loan details of clients or the borrowers for whom ratings were reaffirmed or freshly given.

This mandate was given to the CRAs early this year with the objective to increase disclosures in rating reports. CRAs began implementing this order from the central bank, but sources in the know say India Inc. is resisting such disclosures. “Many companies have expressed their discomfort in divulging bank-wise details of loan exposure and don’t want it to be part of the rating rationale,” says the CEO of a leading CRA.

India Inc. on its part has also approached the central bank to reconsider its stand on such disclosures. Some large conglomerates have written to the RBI asking it to withdraw this requirement. “Information shared with banks and CRAs is highly confidential and is governed by client privilege. Why should such important information be made public?” asks the CFO of a leading cement company.

To put things in context, there are three segments which make up rating documents. Rating rationale captures the score ascribed to the instrument or loan exposure under review and also explains how the score or rating was arrived at. As part of improving transparency, CRAs are required to disclose bank-wise outstanding of the borrower and this is required for fund and non-fund-based exposures as an annexure to the rating rationale.

Whenever there is an increase in credit facility and/or change in composition of term loans, it has to be updated in the annexure. Among the other two documents – rating perspective and rating letter, the former is a paid service which has elaborate details of the client. The rating letter is a confidential communication between the borrower (client) and the CRA and is shared with bankers of the client. This enumerates lender-wise and facility-wise exposure of the borrower.

“For new rating engagements, we have started following this method of reporting. However, in case of legacy clients, some are not comfortable adopting this format of disclosure,” says a senior rating officer of a CRA. On whether such clients should be classified as non-cooperative or not, CRAs say they would first intimate the RBI about such clients. “Technically they are not non-cooperative. They are only resisting certain disclosures being made public,” he adds. “It’s now for RBI to take a call on the matter” says the CFO quoted earlier.

According to highly placed sources, this time around it is unlikely that the RBI would budge on requests from India Inc. Bank-wise public disclosure of loan details in the credit-rating documents was something which was in the works for several years and it has now been implemented. “If the objective is to disseminate as much information as possible, why should the RBI roll back this requirement?” asks the person quoted earlier.



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Varun Chopra, Eduvanz, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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-By Tarika Sethia & Ishan Shah

The ed-tech boom in India has grown multi-fold in the last two years and Varun Chopra of Eduvanz, funding education and skill seekers believes the time is good and the focus will be on tier-2, 3 & 4 cities.

Varun Chopra, Co-founder & CEO at Eduvanz believes that banks have slightly burnt their fingers in financing higher education loans and Eduvanz found a space to fund students who are looking to do courses in domestic universities in India.

Varun said, “The idea was that how everybody is creating financial entities around a certain specific sector or product like an auto loan, property loan, microfinance, etc. We wanted to be the lender for learners.”

Pandemic Impact

The pandemic has accelerated Eduvanz’s growth journey. Some of the key drivers Varun sees is the New Education Policy 2020 and UGC Policy where degrees can be given online which has never happened before in India. So students who are sitting out of tier 2,3,4 cities, now don’t have to come to Bombay and Delhi to get educated, backed by the high penetration of the internet across India.

Eduvanz sanctions loans to these students and becomes one point of contact. It also launched no-cost loans where students can buy laptops, mobile phones at 0% interest.

Varun said, “0% is just a small behaviour change of another way of buying products and paying later. So just like BNPL is picking up in the consumer sector. We’ve created products like study-now-pay-later. So this SNPL product is really making a difference for both the consumer and the education institutes because for educational institutes it is helping them meet the demand of the students and increasing their enrollment and for students, it is at zero cost, it’s very beneficial.”

The average ticket size is around Rs 1.8 lakh and the average tenure of 18 months, but it starts lending at as low as Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,00,000. It has tied up with over 200 universities across countries.

Courses in demand & Risks

Varun highlights that courses and skill sets related to the BFSI, Analytics, Digital Marketing, Blockchain are in demand and students are trying to build their careers in these sectors. A big shift is also being seen in how work from home has benefited these students to pursue courses beyond working hours.

Varun adds, “Employment is backed by quality education and skillsets. Most of these educational courses are also becoming hybrid today. Some of these models are becoming very effective and that is where the boom in education learning is happening in India.

25% of the borrowers are introduced to educational institutes where they don’t have any tie-ups. While they may not get a 0% loan but are able to get their education financed at a cheaper cost, explains Varun.

It has brought down its exposures which are impacted by the pandemic also with institutes where placements have gone down and there’s an employability risk which is determined by its internally created score called ’employability score’.

BFSI, IT & Technology are the key drivers for now.

Impact on Existing book

Varun said, there has been an impact but luckily we were part of the impact-based lending. So we have partnered with Michael Susan Dell foundations, where we get the coverage if the borrower is not able to pay back. However, our portfolio is extremely solid.

It claims that they are one of the best performing fintech with NBFC license with NPAs less than 0.7% in spite of two phases of severed Covid-19 waves. He added, “We have reduced a little bit of exposure on each impacted sector. We have tweaked how much exposure some of the institutes we can take. To be honest, I think we have been fortunate enough because most of the borrowers get employed. Even if there is a delay in getting employed, these guys have been able to kind of repay back over a period of time.”

New Avenues

Eduvanz has also started financing school fees for which it acquired a company called ‘clarity’ last year. It provides students mentorship and industry guidance. Varun said, “We are creating an entirely digital platform around it, where we have partnerships at schools and colleges. Students can talk to these industry veterans and understand good career opportunities and options.”

It has also partnered with companies like Apple to finance study-related equipment where borrowers may want a laptop to do their education. Varun adds, “So there’s a lot of focus on creating a whole lender for learners, not just finance a part of their education, but anything related to their learning, whether it is in mobile devices, insurance, laptops.”

We are lenders for learners: Varun Chopra, Eduvanz

In the last four years, it has collected huge amounts of data on institutes, sectors, consumers, employment trends which has enabled them to create innovative products.

In terms of credit demand, Varun said, “ In the last four months we have constantly hit the highest. There is an extreme amount of demand and we are disbursing close to Rs 40-45 crore per month, and we are planning to reach Rs 75 crore in two to three months. So that’s the immediate target.”

Fundraise & Growth

Eduvanz is looking for a series-B round closely and will be more like a growth capital to build strong technology infrastructure and products and create a strong distribution model for learners.

Varun adds, “The ed-tech boom has led to a new kind of quality education turning up and no sector has grown without the availability of finance, every sector is to be pushed by the financial sector. Being somewhere where we were one of the first ones, we hope to carry this torch of growth in upcoming times.”



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BFSI firms put employee health as top priority as Covid rages, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Personal Finance

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The second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, which put a severe strain on the healthcare infrastructure across India, has made BFSI firms put their employee’s health and safety on top priority.

From helping employees source beds in hospitals, oxygen facilities, critical medicines to financial assistance, BFSI firms will continue to keep their employees’ well-being even as business takes a little hit.

Max Life Insurance

Speaking at the 2nd ETBFSI Virtual Summit, Prashant Tripathy, MD & CEO, Max Life Insurance said, “Things have gotten really difficult in the last few weeks and we have had to change our course on the health, safety and well-being of our employees. We have been helping our employees in whatever way we can to tide through these difficult times.”

The private insurer has set up a platform – Call Health – which provides round-the-clock service like telephonic assessment of Covid-19 symptoms and consultations with empanelled doctors. It has also set up a dedicated helpdesk to provide reliable information about network hospitals and Covid testing labs.

Equitas Small Finance Bank

P N Vasudevan, MD & CEO, Equitas Small Finance Bank, says, “We have to go beyond the new normal as the reality has hit us hard. The first wave was unique, new for all of us and we weren’t familiar with lockdowns and everyone was taken aback. But thankfully, last year the impact of the virus wasn’t that strong as compared to the current time.”

He adds, “We’ve already lost about eight employees and it’s not possible to digest and there’s no way we can ask anyone to go out and do the job.”

He explains that businesses have to work on a different level substantially as compared to last year. The bank is internally preparing for a 3-4 year horizon and long-term timeframe as situations keep evolving.

Vasudevan adds, “Health and well-being of our staff is of paramount importance and we have set up a war-room to ensure we can do our best to support our staff.”

Muthoot Finance

Kochi-headquartered Muthoot Finance echoes the thought that the safety of employee and staff is of paramount importance.

George Alexander Muthoot, MD, Muthoot Finance says, “We’ve more than 5,000 branches across the country, some locked down, some not in lockdown. We can’t force staff to come to the branch but in the head office most of the work has gone in digital processes.”

Muthoot Finance is paying two years’ salary to the dependents of employees who have succumbed to Covid-19. In Kerala, it has tied up with two hospitals to ensure if any of their employees seek any medical assistance the same can be availed.

Muthoot adds, “Encouraging staff to go ahead for vaccination and it is the thing which will keep us going ahead and tackle the pandemic. Business will eventually come back to normal but employees’ safety and well-being are of utmost importance for now.”

Fino Payments Bank

Fino Payments Bank, dependent on its vast rural network, is also finding it hard to tackle the ongoing situation. Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO, Fino Payments Bank, says, “Everything has taken a backseat, what is not normal is that employees are getting impacted due to Covid. Our operations are spread across rural areas, we can’t tell our partners and employees to go out and get the business done in times like these.”

He believes that these will have a long-term impact on how businesses are being done and will change dramatically as situations evolve.

Gupta adds, “For now the priority is to ensure employee safety and wellness with a high level of communication throughout the time. Trying to move as much as we can towards digital operations and processes along with empathy & assistance towards employees and their families.”



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