Thiruvananthapuram, March 8 : The Bharatiya Mahila Bank's Kerala branch would open here Monday, an official said Saturday.

M. C. Maya, the banks' deputy general manager, said currently there are 12 such branches in the country and this would go up to 25 by the end of this fiscal on March 31. Each state will have branch.

The women's bank is 100 percent owned by the central government with a capital of Rs. 1,000 crore. It has been formed for the economic empowerment of women.

Central Bank of India on Thursday announced that it sold its entire stake in Credit Information Bureau of India (Cibil) to Transunion International Inc after due approval.

Cibil is a credit information provider that collects, compiles and maintains records of an individual's payments of loans and credit cards. Banks and other lenders submit records to Cibil on a monthly basis.

Lloyds Banking Group has said that it is planning to buyback bank's bonds form hundred thousand retail investors.

The bank's plans to buy back bonds is facing criticism as some suggested that it is planning to short-change its retail investors who helped the banking group survive the financial crisis. The state-owned bank announced plans to buy back or exchange up to £8.4billion of bonds that were issued in 2009 to supplement its £20.5 billion bailout from taxpayers.

Banking giant, Standard Chartered Plc has said that it is confident over its capital strength even if it is facing a difficult year ahead.

The banking giant said that it is increasing its dividend even as it recorded a fall in its annual profits. The bank recorded its first fall in a decade and this weakened its outlook for the first half of the year. The bank is now facing slowing growth and rising bad loans and it has to record sustained growth even as earnings slows in Asian market.

Lloyds Banking Group has said that if voters chose an independent Scotland this year, it will have a "material impact" on its business.

The bank warned that under the European laws, it will be forced to move England as most of its customers are located there. The European laws require major banks to be based where their customers are located.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to cut key interest rates this week as economic activity in the euro zone grew at the faster than expected pace in the recent past.

A number of ECB watchers have been betting on a rate cut this month, but they also believe that any such decision will be a close call.

Tom Rogers of EY Eurozone Forecast said, "We think the ECB will continue to underline it has options for further easing, but hold off using them unless the recovery takes a turn for the worse. The main focus at the meeting will be on the staff's updated economic forecasts."

Indian banks are well equipped to cope with risks arising from fraudulent cases, according to a recently released banking technology survey report.

The survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) found all banks saying that they had robust & resilient regulatory compliance structure in place to cope with any risks arising from fraudulent cases.

New Delhi, March 5 : Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that the biggest challenge before the public sector banks are the Non Performing Assets (NPA), and added that he has asked them to focus on NPA's recovery.

State bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender, is taking bold steps to trim down bad loans or non-performing assets (NPAs), Managing Director & Group Executive (National Banking) A Krishnakumar said.

Mr. Krishnakumar said that all zones of the bank had been asked to tighten the recovery of debts and cut NPAs, which have swelled to 5.73 per cent.

He said the bank has already initiated legal action against entities that have not cleared loans, stressing that even major clients like airlines would not be spared.

Ulster Bank staff members are expected to hold 15 meetings across the country to discuss concerns over further job cuts and branch closures at the bank.

The bank has now has 5,800 staff and they are concerned over the uncertainty in the bank's future plans. The bank's hundreds of thousands of customers are also concerned over the prospects for the bank, according to the Irish Bank Officials Association (IBOA). Ulster Bank, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), announced that it is committed to the Irish market but pointed out that it will have a smaller presence in the market.

The possibility of a cut in key policy rates by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) depends on inflation numbers, Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) Chairman C Rangarajan said.

Mr. Rangarajan said that the central bank could cut policy rates if rate of inflation continued to trend downwards.

Speaking on the topic, he said, "I think that it (whether RBI should cut interest rates) will depend on inflation numbers. If inflation continues to trend downwards then it will give room to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cut rates."

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday inaugurated the country's first Post Office Savings Bank ATM service at Thiyagaraya Nagar Head Post Office (HPO) in Chennai.

After launching the ATM, Mr.  Chidambaram said that the Congress-led UPA government allocated Rs 4,909 crore for the modernisation of Department of Posts in the interim budget for financial year 2014-15.

UK's central bank has indicated that is it planning to relax terms for the foreign investment banks to enter the British financial market.

The Bank of England is planning to make it easier for the global banks to enter the UK market in order to boost London's role as a major global financial centre. The new rule will reverse a previous policy that forced non-EU banks operating branches in Britain to become standalone subsidiaries with their own capital and liquidity levels.

Stephen Hester, the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has said that he is planning to launch a giant fundraising effort in an effort to revive RSA.

Banking giant, HSBC has said that its profits are expected to rise to about $24 billion for 2013 as it implemented a cost cutting programme.

Under the cost cutting plan, the company is aiming to revive business by reducing costs across functions. Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver has sold or closed 60 businesses, cut 40,000 jobs and aimed at cutting costs across the global organisation during the previous three years.

Sydney, Feb 23 - A meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors ended here Sunday with tangible outcomes, Xinhua reported.

Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey announced the end of the meeting and delivered a two-page communique.

According to the communique, the participants are committed to implementing policies to grow their collective GDP by more than 2 percent above the current trajectory over the next five years.

Each country will deliver a comprehensive growth strategy as part of the Brisbane Leaders Summit in November as the first step.

Indian banks, which have long been reeling under escalating pressure of non-performing assets (NPAs), suffered a heavy loss of more than 17,000 crore during last financial year due to fraud, information obtained through Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed.

According to ET, a total of 62 banks filed 26,598 cases of fraud involving a sum Rs of around 17,284 crore during the FY2012-13. The figure represents a four-fold increase over the previous fiscal.

State Bank of India (SBI), the country's biggest stat-run lender, has welcomed the announcement of four-year moratorium on education loans, saying it would help lenders regularise their loan accounts.

In the interim Budget for the financial year 2014-15 on Monday, Finance Minister proposed a moratorium period for each and every education loan taken up to March 31, 2009 and outstanding as of December 31, 2013.

Discouraged by weak economic growth data, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) on Tuesday refrained from fresh monetary easing measures.

Concluding its two-day policy meeting yesterday, Japan's central bank said it would keep its massive monetary easing programme in place, while tweaking a loan scheme to lenders as part of its efforts to stimulate lending to companies and individuals.

Mark Carney, the governor of the UK's central bank has said that the Bank of England is not looking to increase its key interest rates soon.

He affirmed that the central will only start increasing rates when the UK economy shows signs of operating at full capacity. The central bank had said that it will consider a range of measures while deciding if it is aiming to increase interest rates.