• Bharti AXA General Insurance uses Whatsapp to deliver policy & renewal documents.

• Bharti AXA General Insurance, a private non-life insurer becomes the 1st company in India to use Whatsapp chatbot. Through this service, the company started delivering policies and renewal premium to its customers.

• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has launched UPI awareness campaign “UPI Chalega”

• The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) is keen to further popularise its flagship Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which has clocked over 100 crore transactions per month.

• Global tech major Microsoft announced a partnership with SBI to train differently-abled people find jobs in the banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector.

• Over 500 differently-abled youths will be upskilled in the first year of the collaboration.

• In a major step to boost the credit growth, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has eased Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) requirement of commercial banks for 5- years.

• So now the banks would not be needed to maintain the cash reserve ratio (CRR) for 5- years on their deposits for the amount equivalent to loans lent to automobiles, residential housing, and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) between 31 Jan-31 July, 2020 from their net demand and time liabilities (NDTL) for maintenance of the CRR.

● The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will conduct the “Financial Literacy Week 2020” from February 10 to February 14, 2020.

● The theme of the Financial Literacy Week 2020 is “Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)”.

● This year India’s central bank is focusing on the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

● The Financial Literacy Week 2020 will aim to aware people about the formalisation, collateral free loan, discounting of receivables, rehabilitation of stressed units and timely repayment.

• India’s leading digital payments company,has launched an all-in-one QR (Quick Response), point-of-sale (POS) device for merchants across India & SDK (software development kit) for third-party integration .

• With the help of QR & POS device, businessmen will be able to get unlimited payments across the country at zero percent fees through Paytm wallet, Rupay Cards & all UPI (Unified Payments Interface) based apps directly.

• The Reliance General Insurance Company Limited , one of the leading insurance companies in India, has launched a comprehensive health insurance plan called “Reliance Health Infinity”.

• Under the plan, the minimum sum insured will be Rs. 3 lakh while the maximum sum insured limit will be Rs. 1 crore.

• The Union Cabinet has approved amendments to the Banking Regulation Act to empower India’s Central Bank (Reserve Bank of India) to have better control over urban co-operative banks and multi-state cooperative banks.

• These amendments will apply to the urban co-operative banks and multi-state cooperative banks.

• This is to prevent a repeat of Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative Bank-like crisis.

• In its 6th Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Committee meeting, the Reserve Bank of India has decided to keep the policy repo rate unchanged to 5.15%.

• The reverse repo rate under the LAF stands same i.e. 4.90%.

• The marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate also remains same i.e. 5.40%.

• RBI has increased the real GDP growth for fiscal year 2020-21 from 5% to 6% .

• The State owned Bank of Baroda has partnered with Credit Analysis and Research Limited (CARE) for assessing the credit qualities of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME).

• Loan value for SMEs will be identified through 8 –Point scale. Number 1 indicates the highest creditworthiness and 8 – poor creditworthiness.

• The rating agency will evaluate the credit quality of existing and prospective SME customers of the bank.

• The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has signed a licensing agreement with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Futures Europe, an operator of global exchanges and clearing houses.

• India is one of the largest consumers and importers of crude oil in the world, and Brent crude is highly co-related with the Indian crude oil market.

• This agreement will serve the needs and interests to the Indian energy commodities space and market participants to access Rupee-dominated Brent benchmark prices.

• It will also help Indian commodity markets by providing convenient and cost-effective onshore hedging products and enable the price discovery of Brent crude prices in the Indian time zone.

• The Government of India and the Government of Maharashtra has signed a USD 210 million loan agreement with the World Bank.

• The loan agreement has been signed for Maharashtra Agribusiness and Rural Transformation Project.

• In the fourth special open market operation (OMO) auctions, the Reserve Bank of India bought Rs 10,000 crore worth of long-term securities and sold Rs 2,950 crore worth of short-term government bonds.

• Last week, the RBI had stated it will simultaneously purchase and sell government securities under open market operations (OMO) of Rs 10,000 crore each.

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the proposal of the Department of the Financial Services for the appointment of Challa Sreenivasulu Setty as the Managing Director of the State Bank of India (SBI).

• currently he is serving as the deputy managing director of the SBI.

• He has been appointed as the MD of the SBI for a period of three years with effect from the date of his taking over the charge of the post or until further orders, whichever is earlier and which is extendable by 2 years or until further orders, whichever is earlier, after review of his performance.

•Sanjiv Chadha is the current managing director and chief executive of Bank of Baroda.

The government of India announced the merger of Bank of Baroda, Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank on September 17, 2018, to create the country's third-largest lender. The amalgamation is the first-ever three-way consolidation of banks in the country, with a combined business of Rs 14.82 trillion (short scale), making it the third-largest bank after State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank.

Bank of Baroda HQ - Vadodara, Gujarat

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) appointed Lingam Venkat Prabhakar as MD & CEO of Canara Bank.

• Prabhakar was the executive director of Punjab National Bank and he will be replacing RA Sankara Narayanan who will retire end of this month.

• The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) appointed Atanu Kumar Das as MD & CEO of Bank of India.

• He was the Executive Director at Bank of India who will be promoted to the post of MD& CEO in the same bank following its vacancy since July last year.

• Country’s largest private sector bank, ICICI bank has launched a Cardless cash withdrawal facility from its ATMs with a per-day transaction limit of Rs 20,000.

• With this, customers can withdraw cash from more than 15,000 ATMs of the bank through the bank’s mobile banking application ‘iMobile’.

• This facility can be used for self-withdrawal when ICICI customers do not wish to carry the debit card & also enables customers to withdraw cash securely and easily from their mobile phone for everyday use.

* Bharti Airtel Limited joins hands with Bharti AXA Life Insurance Company Limited to offer Rs 2 lakh insurance cover to Airtel users with every recharge of Rs 179 prepaid bundle.

* The new plan will be accessible at any Airtel retail store or on the Airtel Thanks app.

* Bharti Airtel Limited is an Indian global telecommunications services company.

* On January 21st, 2020, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has cancelled the Certificate of Authorisation (CoA) of Vodafone m-pesa on account of voluntary surrender of authorisation.

* Following the cancellation of the CoA, the company cannot transact the business of issuance and operation of prepaid payment instruments.

* However, m-Paisa customers and merchants can claim valid under POS.

* Vodafone Idea in 2019 has decided to close m-pesa vertical after the closure of Aditya Birla Idea Payments Bank Limited (ABIPBL).

* Vodafone m-pesa was one of the 11 firms that were granted a payment bank license by the RBI in 2015.