Banking & Financial Awareness GK Questions with Answers – Page 13

Priority Sector Lending Certificates were introduced in 2016 so that a bank which has lent beyond its target can sell the excess achievement to a bank that has fallen short.

A bank that falls short of its priority sector target is not fined; it is required to place the shortfall in the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund kept with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, or in the funds notified with SIDBI, the National Housing Bank and MUDRA, and…

Under the 2025 Directions a loan to an individual for educational purposes, including a vocational course, is classified as priority sector lending so long as it does not exceed 25 lakh rupees; the ceiling applies to the loan, not to the fee or the course.

A regional rural bank is set up under the Regional Rural Banks Act, 1976 to serve farmers, farm labourers and rural artisans, so the Reserve Bank asks it for a much higher share than it asks of a commercial bank: 75 per cent to the priority sector, with 18 per…

The Directions list eight categories: agriculture, micro, small and medium enterprises, export credit, education, housing, social infrastructure, renewable energy and others.

Of the 40 per cent that a domestic commercial bank must lend to the priority sector, 18 per cent of Adjusted Net Bank Credit has to go to agriculture, which covers farm credit, agriculture infrastructure and ancillary activities.

A domestic commercial bank, and a foreign bank with 20 or more branches in India, must lend 40 per cent of its Adjusted Net Bank Credit, or of the Credit Equivalent of Off-Balance Sheet Exposure where that is higher, to the priority sector.

The failure of the Palai Central Bank of Kerala in 1960, coming on top of trouble at other small banks, badly shook public confidence and pushed Parliament into passing the Deposit Insurance Act, 1961, under which cover began on 1 January 1962.

Insurance with the Corporation is compulsory for all commercial banks, including the branches of foreign banks working in India, for local area banks and regional rural banks, for payments banks and small finance banks, and for state, central and primary urban co-operative banks.

Every account a depositor holds in the same right and the same capacity in one bank is added together, across all its branches, and the five lakh rupee limit is then applied to that total of principal and interest.

The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2021 created an interim payment so that the depositors of a bank placed under all inclusive directions need not wait for the bank to be wound up.

The Act allows the Corporation, with the previous approval of the Reserve Bank of India, to raise the premium only as far as fifteen paise a year for every hundred rupees of assessable deposits, so fifteen paise is the statutory ceiling.

With effect from 1 April 2020 the Corporation charges twelve paise a year on every hundred rupees of a bank assessable deposits.

The Deposit Insurance Corporation, created under the Deposit Insurance Act, 1961, began functioning on 1 January 1962, and that is the date from which bank deposits in India have been insured.

Inter-bank deposits are expressly excluded, because deposit insurance exists to protect ordinary depositors and not to insure banks against one another.

The whole of the deposit insurance premium is paid by the bank, and a bank is barred from passing the cost on, so the charge never appears in a depositor passbook.

The Corporation came into being on 15 July 1978, when the Deposit Insurance Corporation was merged with the Credit Guarantee Corporation of India Ltd, and the Deposit Insurance Act, 1961 was renamed the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, 1961.

Every depositor of an insured bank is covered up to five lakh rupees, and that figure takes in the principal and the accrued interest together.

The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India. It works under the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation Act, 1961, has its head office in Mumbai, and is chaired by a Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank.

The first accord was a simple framework that asked banks to hold capital equal to at least eight per cent of their risk weighted assets, with risk weights of zero, twenty, fifty and a hundred per cent assigned according to the creditworthiness of the borrower.