Life Insurance Corporation of India will launch LI...

Life Insurance Corporation of India, India’s largest and oldest life insurance company, is planning to launch its much awaited launch of Credit Cards in the month of October.

The insurance company was earlier in talks with a firm but due to some reason, the deal could not materialize. At present, the company is negotiating with some another firm and is in its final stages. On the 52nd anniversary of LIC, Senior divisional manager Bhausaheb Gujar said:

In all likelihood, LIC’s credit card will be launched in October 2008.

Although, the company has yet not finalized the name of the new company, but might name it as “LIC Credit Cards” or “LIC Card Services”. LIC offers it policyholders with the service to pay their premium with LIC’s own credit card and will further reduce the transaction cost for LIC.

Earlier LIC was roped in with Corporation bank and Axis bank for taking premiums from those who hold there accounts there. The mode of payment was either through Internet, electronic clearing service, automatic teller machines (ATMs) of Corporation Bank and Axis Bank, online collection at Axis Bank branches or through LIC’s portal.
The LIC premium can be paid through SMS, but currently this service is available to only account holders of Corporation Bank.

New Deposit Schemes and Interest Rates from Develo...

Development Credit Bank Ltd., one of India’s emerging private sector banks, has announced the deposit scheme- DCB Freedom1-2-3 fixed deposit and has also come up with some other fixed deposit rates.

As per the DCB Freedom1-2-3 fixed deposit, the scheme offers attractive and money saving policy to its customers by giving them aggressive rate of 10.50% for fixed deposit in the ‘375 days to 3 years’ slab. No additional amount will be charged for early withdrawal after 375 days.

In the launch of the scheme, Mr. Gautam Vir, Managing Director & CEO DCB, announced, “DCB has revised interest rates for various terms of deposit providing a bag of fixed deposit products under one roof to their customers to deposit in short term or long term.”

Further, the bank has also revised interest rates for 91 days deposit by increasing it to nine per cent from the previous seven per cent for the deposit up to Rs. 50 lakhs. Under the same scheme, the senior citizens on the day of the launch of the fixed deposit will receive additional 0.50 per cent interest from the current rates, as being stated by the bank.
The new rates will come into action form 0ctober 1st 2008.

SBI increases Interest Rates with new deposit sche...

India’s largest public-sector undertaking, the State Bank of India (SBI) has revised its interest rates and has came up with three slabs for the 2-3 years category which will be effective from October 1.
As per the scheme, the bank has increased the deposit rates by 1% to 10.5% for the 1000 days maturity deposit for the depositors.
On the other hand, the deposit rates for 2-3 year maturity have been increased from 9.5% to 12.50%. Under the same scheme, the senior citizen will be benefitted by getting additional 0.5% interest.
Apart from that, the bank will also offer an additional 0.25% rate above the card rate on a single term deposit of Rs 15 lakh and above, which will have tenure of 181 days to less than 2 years. Further, for the tenure of less than 181 days and the period of 2 years, the bank will also offer 0.1% above the card rate on a single term deposit of Rs 15 lakhs and above.

New Pension Fund Scheme will be launched by PFRDA...

The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) has come up with a pension fund scheme for all those employees who are working in unorganized sectors including retail, textile and mines. This pension fund is expected to be active in the next six months.

For this scheme, the PFRDA has already selected four companies namely Mercer, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Crisil, which will help in recruiting the institutional advisor.

The CEO of PFRDA, Mr. N R Rayalu has declared that the authority is in the process of appointing an institutional advisor to advice on the pension scheme. Further four parties have been selected and the advisor will be short listed in 10-15 days. He further added,

This will help PFRDA roll out the scheme for the unorganized sector within a period of six months.

The PFRDA expects to give benefits to many unorganized sector by giving them the privilege of having them the benefits of the pension plans.

$500 million investment will be made by Pepsico in...

Recently PepsiCo has found India to be a very good market for their business in near future. It is planning a USD 500 million investment over the next three years.

Indra Nooyi, Chairperson and CEO, PepsiCo said, “As a tangible sign of our continued confidence in India, I’m delighted to announce that we are expecting to invest a further USD500 million over the next three yrs with the goal of tripling our business here. This investment will create additional 50000 jobs.”

“The problems on Wall Street have not yet trickled over to the Main Street, which is where we are. Our business continues to be robust. We generate a lot of cash. We are financially very healthy. I don’t believe problems on Wall Street will affect companies like ours,” Nooyi said.

ICICI Prudential SMART fund appealing retail inves...

ICICI Prudential has launched a new product, ICICI Prudential SMART fund. NFO opened on August 18 which will be closed on September 19. Nilesh Shah, Deputy Managing Director of ICICI Prudential, revealed that SMART Fund will be placed among the retail investors also as it is not a kind of capital protected product.

Though credit risk is involved in it, there will be no market risks. Debentures are formulated in such manner that when the Nifty index go down, they do not participate, having the principal amount back credited with some minimum assured returns.

1. It is a structured debt scheme which seeks investment of 95% on equity-linked debentures,
2. Have two plans of 720 days and 1,080 days.
3. Investors will have opportunity to earn equity market linked returns.
4. It tends to High Net worth Individual (HNI) product for its complexity.
5. The Company is seeking to offer Structured Methodology Aiming at Returns over Tenure, which they call SMART Fund.

It seems that the petrochemical related products’ prices will come down due to the drop in the global price of oil. Though now RBI will be taking the final decision whether to tighten or not, the fixed income market has been divided.

Infosys will also be in special economic zones now...

Infosys Technologies is now reported to be expanding in the special economic zones (SEZ) of the country to take some tax advantage. This had been reported by a top official of the Company on Wednesday to Indiatimes reporters.

Infosys is planning to have all their expansions in special economic zones (SEZs) as in Software Technology Parks the tax incentives will be extinguishing soon.

1. The Bangalore based IT giant is estimating a cost of Rs.11 billion (i.e. $255.8 million) for this purpose
2. Out of which Rs.10 billion is expected to set up the centres in those areas, said S. Gopalakrishnan, managing director of Infosys.
3. Infosys is planning to have centres in Chennai, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mangalore and Thiruvananthapuram for now.
4. Infosys is starting with their establishment inside Mahindra World City SEZ in Chennai.
5. They have 129 acres and are planning to accommodate 35,000 seats there.
6. In the first phase they will be having 11,200 seats.

While in the second phase they will have 5,000 seats, said T.V. Mohandas Pai, Company Director.