Unknown person misused debit card made lakhs of rupees purchasing

An unknown person has been booked by the Chatushrungi police allegedly for using a fake debit card and withdrawing over Rs 7 lakh from the ICICI bank account of Jitendra Kanetkar, working as a manager in a private firm in Aundh.

As per information provided by sub-inspector Shaukatali Sayed, Kanetkar and his family had gone for a trip to Guhagar between January 1 and 5. When he returned, he tried to pay the house rent online but was unable to log into his bank account. Therefore Kanetkar made a complaint to the bank's call centre and requested for the reactivation of his password, but was told to make a written request to the bank to get a new password.

On January 10 Kanetkar received his new password, even this did not work. He then asked the bank to freeze his account till his password is activated.

Sayed told that Kanetkar received a letter from the bank, dated January 12, stating that a debit card had been issued in his name on January 6 and that his mobile number had also been changed.

Kanetkar got suspected that something is wrong hence he obtained a statement of accounts from the bank and found that over Rs 7 lakh had been withdrawn. Thus he got a complaint registered of cheating with the police under section 467 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.

Sayed said on investigation, it was found that the unknown person had withdrawn huge amounts from various ATMs by using the debit card between January 8 and January 12.

From investigations it was also discovered that the suspect had made purchases of around lakhs of rupees from various shops. Sayed told the police is trying to track down the suspect.

Fraudsters used details essential for phone banking to obtain duplicate credit cards

An executive of a city real estate firm month back discovered that more than Rs 50,000 was fraudulently withdrawn from his credit card account. He was sure he had neither misplaced the card nor lost it.

After a month long investigation police was able to find a unique technique used by the fraudsters. With the support of a section of bank employees, they were able to obtain a primary database of the customers. They obtain the answers to the security questions essential for phone banking and used these details to get a duplicate credit card.

Such fraudsters approached the customers on allegedly of increasing credit limit or to give a new card and get a fake application form just to collect security questionnaire details and know a customer's particular card number.

After this, fraudsters would call up the phonebanking official and inform about a change in address. After changing the address, fraudsters would keep quiet for a month or two. Then they again call up the phone banker to report about losing the card. They would ask the bank to send a card to the new address.

Swamped with such complaints, police have asked banking organizations to verify the changed address physically. On Wednesday, state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and ICICI bank jointly organized a workshop for their officers and had discussion about the changing modus operandi of the fraudsters. P. Nirajnayan, IG -II, CID asked the banks to take more stringent security measures about security questionnaire, which is practically the password of any account.

A senior police officer informed, "Generally, the security questionnaire contains four questions mother's maiden name, date of birth, address and the card's expiry date. We asked the banks to change the pattern of the questions in regular interval to prevent fraud".

ICICI plans New Year gift by slashing rates by 50-75 bps

ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector bank is planning to cut interest rates by 50-75 basis points across the board in the new year which will make home and car loans cheaper. A senior banker informed with direct knowledge of the development, the rate cut will happen “very soon” — maybe early next month.

However, ICICI bank will not do phased reduction in rates unlike its rival HDFC Bank. “Whatever reduction they go in for, it will be at one go,” the banker told ET. At present ICICI’s prime lending rate (PLR) is 14.25%. Its home loan range extends to 11.5-12.25% for floating rates while the fixed rate is around 15.5%. In car loans, ICICI’s average is around 15%.

ICICI will implement rate cut uniformly to all its businesses. This would mean it will also make home loans and car loans cheaper. It would be quite different from HDFC Bank, whose rate cut left the home loan segment untouched because it’s under HDFC, which owns 19.4% stake in HDFC Bank.

The decision to reduce interest rates will come in support of the Reserve Bank’s cut in the repo and reverse repo earlier this month. However, some public and private sector banks have already announced rate cuts. Union Bank of India was the first to announce reduction in PLR by 0.75 percentage points to 12.5%. HDFC Bank followed by reducing 50 basis point. The cut by HDFC Bank has been announced in two trenches of 25 basis points each, the first from December 15 and the second from January 1.

This year ICICI’s retail business saw a growth of around 5%. In contrast, its corporate business has grown at a 10-15% clip.

Although the corporate business is much smaller currently, being less than half of the retail business. The spiffy growth in the corporate business has generated rumor that ICICI might focus more on that segment but the bank says there is no intention to give less attention to retail business.

At present home loan rates across various banks stand around 10.5% for sub-Rs 20 lakh loans and around 12% for above Rs 20 lakh loans. On the other hand car loans stand around 12.5-16% depending on loan profile and kind of model chosen.

Interest rates likely to contract to five per cent by the end of December

According to economists inflation has slopped down significantly to 6.84 per cent joined with falling oil prices may probably prompt more lending rate cuts upto one per cent by Banks

Bank of Baroda's Chief Economist, Rupa Rege Nitsure said, "The current fall in inflation would put more pressure on banks to bring down their interest rates by additional one per cent across the board by March. There is a strong southward bias".

India's heading inflation dropped to a nearly nine month low of 6.84 per cent primarily due to cut in domestic fuel prices after nearly 20 per cent decline in the global crude oil prices and declining prices of vegetables, fruits, pulses and iron, steel items.

Most of the state-owned banks and a few private sector banks are slashing their prime lending rates after RBI's monetary measures rate and finance ministry’s calls for immediate rate reductions.

Nitsure said many private leading lenders including ICICI Bank are yet to decide on revising their rates and they might have to take a call now due to the steep fall in inflation.

IDBI Gilts' Economist, Amol Agarwal said monetary policy makers in the Reserve Bank might have to face different challenges if the pace of fall in the heading inflation continues in the remaining part of this fiscal.

"The inflation at current level (6.84 per cent) is good as it has been the policy Endeavour of the Reserve Bank in the past few months. However, if the decline in the inflation continues in this pace, that may pause policy hurdles by mid-next year," Agarwal said.

Inflation escalated to multi-year highs (around 13 per cent) early this year. Thus high inflation and uncertain liquidity conditions impelled the RBI to infuse above Rs 3 lakh crore liquidity into the system.

By looking at the current conditions, the inflation is likely to contract to five per cent by the end of December and to zero by mid-next year, and this might put pressure on private banks to cut down their lending and deposit rates, the Chief Economist of a leading private sector bank said.

"Interest rates will come down in the next few months, also among the private sector banks as they would, otherwise, face low demand for their products," he said.