Indian Banks' Association News

Bank unions have called for a strike to protest a nominal 2 percent wage hike offered by the Indian Banks' Association (IBA).

Bank employees have organised a demonstrations on May 29 at State Bank of India' branch main branch in Mumbai.

In the wage negotiation meeting held on May 5, 2018, IBA made a propositions to offer 2 percent hike in the wage bill cost as on March 31, 2017.

The bank employees across the country will observe a nation-wide strike for two days starting May 30 in order to protest against low hike offered by the management body. Indian Banks' Association (IBA) offered the employees 'a meagre' two per cent increment. This led them to raise their voice demanding the government's intervention in wage revision.

Reversing its earlier order, the Reserve Bank on Wednesday said the bank branches dealing in government businesses need not remain open on April 1 in view of the annual closing business.

In order to tackle the burning problem of sticky loans and debt-heavy companies, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed formation of dual funds by banks which may help in solving the tricky situation.

In light of the Rs 6,100-crore Bank of Baroda (BoB) money remittance case, Indian Banks' Association (IBA) is considering a proposal to engage specialist officers only in their areas of core competencies rather than general banking business.

The Central Vigilance Commissioner has asked the Reserve Bank of India and Indian Banking Association to remain alert on smaller forex transactions from single accounts

"Information received from the banks are highly unstructured which makes mining of data contained in the statements very difficult. They also use different narrations for debit and credit entries which are sometimes very cryptic in nature, making it difficult to decipher the nature of transactions and hence the money trail," an official said.

"We have surplus liquidity in the system as there has not been much credit offtake. So, repo window does not give banks any advantage as we don't borrow from banks at this point. So, the CRR window helps us bring down cost of funds. We expect and will request 0.5 percent cut in CRR, which would release about Rs 40,000 crore into the system," Bhasin added.

A section of public sector bank employees unions today met Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha to press for early wage revision.

Public sector bank employee unions have defered their one-day strike, proposed for Wednesday.

Employee unions of public sector banks on Tuesday deferred their proposed one-day strike on January 7.

LIC, which has been asked by the government to provide life cover worth Rs 30,000 to beneficiaries of Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), has asked Indian Banks' Association to provide a list of those insured and details of claims to be given by it under the scheme.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday questioned Reserve Bank of India's decision to put a cap on withdrawals by banking customers using their ATM cards, saying account holders were being "unneccesarily taxed".

The public sector bank employees had stopped work on November 12 on the wage issue, affecting services like cheque clearance and withdrawal from branches across the country. The strike call was given by United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU).

Services at ATMs of all the banks were normal, barring a few cases where the machines ran out of cash.

The delegation informed that more than 10 rounds of discussions have taken place between bank management and UFBU so far on the issue but IBA is delaying the settlement.