Behind the scenes efforts are on to resolve the dispute between the insurance regulator and Sebi. According to sources, one more meeting has been called between the regulators and the finance secretary. Sources say that recent measures taken by the insurance regulator - forcing insurers to disclose commission and ensuring that life cover is available on all products - are aimed at demarcating regulatory turf. Irda has tactically pulled insurance companies out of the below five-year and pure investment product space. Next on the agenda could be penalties for misselling.

DISTINCT IDENTITY

BAJAJ Fin Serve, the holding company for the bike manufacturer's joint ventures with Allianz, has decided to carve a distinct identity for itself. The group will come out with a distinct logo which will be used by the insurance ventures as well. Incidentally, the financial companies did carry the old hexagonal symbol earlier, but this was dropped after the automaker reworked its brand identity to introduce a 'flying B' logo. Since then, Bajaj FinServe has been carrying only the Bajaj name.

STALEMATE CONTINUES

What's common between Enron and providers of reverse mortgage - both record payments that are accrued but not collected as profits. Just as Enron booked its receivables from contracts to provide electricity as earnings, lenders want to treat the future income they receive from a reverse mortgage loan as income. But at the same time, they are unwilling to pay tax on such earnings. The tax authorities say that if the income is booked in a particular year, it is only logical that the tax liability arises in that year itself. Given the stalemate, it seems that it will be a long time before reverse mortgage will take off in India.

INSIDER FOR TOP JOB

Unlike what was believed earlier, JP Morgan is likely to bring in an insider from its overseas offices to head its investment banking operations in India. The move will assuage feelings of i-bankers of the firm in India and prevent further attrition. There were talks earlier about the firm looking to bring in a senior banker from a rival firm. However, the next few months there could be some interesting transitions.

READY FOR A FIGHT

Rana Kapoor seems to be in a race to take on 'older' private sector banks like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank. In a conference last week, he claimed that Yes Bank had been able to grow its business at a faster pace than the other private sector banks during their initial years. He plans to increase the advances to Rs 1 lakh crore by 2015 from the current Rs 22,193 crore and balance sheet to Rs 1.5 lakh crore from Rs 36,382 crore. However, recent years have shown that fast expansions always bring their own pitfalls as seen in some of the largest banks globally.

DIFFICULT CHOICE

There's a good news for retired public sector bank employees - they have one more chance to become part of the pension scheme that has turned very attractive after being indexed to inflation. But the flip side is that these employees will have to forego a major chunk of their wage arrears to become a part of the scheme. Retired employees with dependents are now having to make a difficult choice of whether to go for a lifelong pension or to hold on to their lumpsum benefits.

Source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/