August 2017

31Aug

India. Pension ecosystem: New body needed to bring all retirement funds under its umbrella

At a time when personal savings, unlike in the past, fetch insubstantial returns, the current generation of employees is concerned over its post-retirement existence. There are also added features to modern-day life, with changing demographic structure, enhanced longevity, etc. Pension payout is becoming an ever-growing burden on the exchequer, and might become excessive, as has happened in Brazil. In India’s case, this is occurring at a time when almost 110 million people of retirement-age are not covered by any...

August 31, 2017
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08Aug

India. Can Pensioners Be Divided Into Arbitrary Categories To Deny Rightful Pension, SC Set To Give A Ruling

The Supreme Court bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and Uday Umesh Lalit, on August 1 concluded hearing the arguments and reserved its judgment in the case of United Bank of India v United Bank of India Retirees Welfare Association & Others. This is an appeal against the Calcutta High Court’s Division Bench judgment, delivered on September 26 last year. The case raises an interesting issue on whether an invidious classification can be made between employees, who retired before...

August 8, 2017
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08Aug

India. Want to invest 50% of govt staff pension fund in market, says regulator

India’s pension regulator, the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), has written to the government seeking approval to invest 50 per cent of the funds contributed by government employees under the National Pension Scheme (NPS), its flagship scheme in stocks. This signals a major shift considering that only 15 per cent of such funds are now routed to the stock markets. The NPS now has a corpus of Rs 198,000 crore with 87 per cent — Rs 172,260 crore...

August 8, 2017
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04Aug

India. Government pension scheme to offer fixed rate of interest to investors

Interest rates will "slowly" become "reasonable", Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday, a day after the RBI cut interest rates by 0.25 per cent. He also said that the government insurer LIC has come out with a pension scheme to offer fixed rate of interest to investors. A day after the RBI cut the interest rates, Jaitley said lending rate of 14-15 per cent will make India uncompetitive in the global market and industry cannot invest at such higher interest...

August 4, 2017
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July 2017

31Jul

Can Regulatory Sandbox Nurture India’s FinTech Innovation?

The Indian financial services sector is undergoing major changes today. With more than 600 startups in the space of lending, payments, insurance and trading space, Fintech startups are not only spearheading innovation, but are also prompting traditional banks and financial institutions to explore new technologies and investing heavily in digital service delivery channels. However, fintech startups unlike others face additional challenges of operating in a heavily regulated industry and have stiff competition as their key competitors are well established banking...

July 31, 2017
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05Jul

India. Penniless KSRTC fails to pay salary, pension

The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is running from pillar to post to mobilise Rs. 300 crore needed to pay this month’s salary and wages of employees and empanelled staff and three-and-a-half months’ pension arrears to retirees. With the government not coming forward to bail out the ailing corporation with a further loan to pay the salary and pension, the management of the transport utility is groping in the dark to mobilise funds. Though the KSRTC approached the Kerala...

July 5, 2017
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June 2017

13Jun

India. PE/VC investments hit 10-year high at $3.1 bn in May

Private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) investments have recorded the highest monthly investments in the past 10 years at $3.1 billion in May 2017. For the third consecutive month in a year, the investment flow crossed the $2-billion mark. The financial services sector topped the table on account of the $1.4-billion investment by Softbank in Paytm. This deal accounted 46 per cent of aggregate deal value for the month. According to Ernst & Young (EY) data, the month recorded a 264...

June 13, 2017
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08Jun

India. Survey looks for what ageing India needs

Since April 1, teams in Gujarat have gone about meeting 4,000 people aged over 45 to assess their needs, the first step of a nationwide, 25-year exercise aimed at framing long-term policy initiatives for India’s ageing population. The Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI), launched last year by the health ministry, has targeted a sample of 60,000 people over 45, whose health will be documented over 25 years. Gujarat began its fieldwork on April 1 this year, along with Daman...

June 8, 2017
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07Jun

India. School students paying staff pensions

Should a school student who has gained admission on full scholarship, after a national-level entrance examination, be forced to pay for the pensions and salary of his school staff? This is the question that the authorities who run the Sainik Schools are struggling to address. According to the estimates with the government, total expenditure on a Sainik School student is a minimum of ₹62,000 per year. Even in the case of students on a full scholarship, (excluding those from SC/ST and...

June 7, 2017
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May 2017

22May

India’s pension funds have now more investment options

Pension fund managers will now have more investment options, with InvITs finally becoming a reality after two years and REITs in the offing. Pension regulator PFRDA has created a separate asset class for investment under which the funds can be invested into newly created trusts InvITs and REITs. PFRDA has issued a revised investment guidelines for National Pension System (NPS) schemes (for private sector), which came into effect from May 8. The revised guidelines comes in the backdrop of two Infrastructure Investment...

May 22, 2017
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