At long last, Diego Alphonso Dias, known in our bank as DAD, bought our case for a third man in the dealing room, based on the logic that two dealers were needed to do forex trading, one at the Reuters monitor to track the rates and the other at the telex doing the deals. Two months of the...

Read More

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has issued guidelines to insurers on structuring cyber insurance for individuals and gaps that need to be filled. As per the guidelines, cyber insurance should provide cover against theft of funds and identity, unauthorised...

Read More

Star Health & Allied Insurance, a stand-alone health insurer, has launched a platinum variant of its existing cardiac-care and cancer-care plans. Let us find out if they are worth it.   Star Health Cardiac Care – Platinum This is an indemnity cover policy designed for persons who...

Read More

Home loan balance transfer is a feature that allows you to switch your lender. The question is why would you switch to a different lender, and how does a home loan balance transfer benefit you? The most obvious answer is, of course, to reduce your total interest outflow. A balance transfer...

Read More

In the days gone by, companies died slowly. It took a long time. It also took a long time to establish companies, especially those that would create a global impact. Thus, you have companies that have been around for a hundred years. There is a company in Japan, which is a thousand years...

Read More

People with Employees' Provident Fund and Voluntary Provident Fund (VPF) contribution of over Rs 2.5 lakh per financial year will now have two separate PF accounts.   Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced, in this year's budget, that PF contribution of more than Rs 2.5...

Read More

Edelweiss Tokio Life has launched a new term life insurance called Total Protect Plus. The pure-risk insurance plan provides life cover up to age 100 years, including a host of optional riders to enhance the cover.   Term life insurance is a useful product to protect dependents from...

Read More

Diego Alphonso Dias, known in the bank as DAD, was truly paternal.    He was a veteran in the bank and the head of finance, having risen from the lowly rank of OBC (office slang meaning ‘ordinary bloody clerk’ – no offense intended to anyone) to this elevated position by dint of sheer...

Read More

HDFC Life Insurance Company Limited (HDFC Life) on Friday announced the acquisition of Exide Life Insurance Company Ltd (Exide Life) from Exide Industries Ltd for Rs 6,687 crore.   The process for merger of Exide Life into HDFC Life will be initiated on completion of the acquisition....

Read More

Suspense continues on whether vehicle-buyers will have to shell out a huge amount towards insurance premium upfront for five years from Wednesday onwards to comply with the Madras High Court's order.   As things stand now, new car-buyers in Tamil Nadu, from Wednesday onwards, have to...

Read More

Earlier this year, the insurance regulator announced a standard pension product called Saral Pension. The standard pension plan is mandated to be offered by all life insurers who sell pension products. Anyone of age 40 years to 80 years can buy this pension plan and start to earn fixed...

Read More

The families of deceased bank employees will receive up to 30 per cent of the last drawn salary of the employee under the National Pension Scheme (NPS).   Contribution made by PSBs for employee pensions under the National Pension Scheme has been hiked to 14 per cent from the earlier...

Read More

My partner and I had been manning our forex dealing room for a few months with little success when a game-changer arrived – the Reuters screen.    Hitherto, we had no way of knowing what the international exchange rates were, except by contacting an overseas dealing room through the...

Read More

In a path-breaking judgement the Gondia District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has directed the State Bank of India (SBI) to reverse the disputed transaction of Rs18.36 lakh into the customer's bank account.   The Commission even directed SBI to recover the money from the...

Read More

The Ministry of Education has offered a fresh opportunity to all those students who could not register themselves for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main till now. All such students can now register themselves for the exam on Wednesday. Earlier, the registration process had been...

Read More

Indian banking customers are being targeted by a new type of phishing attack using the ngrok platform (a web service provider). The malicious actors have abused the ngrok platform to host phishing websites impersonating internet banking portals of Indian banks. Using these phishing websites,...

Read More

It was the first day of work for me as a medical representative (MR) and I began with the first doctor on the list given to me. For me, it was a tense interview—my first. When I was going to my second, I met another MR on the road.    He said hello. He introduced himself as Joe and...

Read More

Health insurance is a useful product in one’s financial planning. It protects your finances from getting drained due to huge bills occurring from medical emergencies and critical illnesses.   Health insurance can be bought as an individual policy to protect only self or as family...

Read More

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has done it again.   The public auction, yesterday, of the new benchmark 10-year GSec (6.10% GS2031) witnessed decent investor participation with a bid-cover ratio of 1.60. However, RBI rejected ALL bonafide bids for Rs14,000 crore on offer for this...

Read More

Michael Isitt, the manager of the Bombay branch (sorry, ancient past – ‘Mumbai’ had not arrived yet), posed a problem for the customers of my bank.    “Is it I-sit or Is-it?” They would ask. Actually it was “Eye-zit.”   I was a junior officer in charge of remittances at...

Read More