SIB wins award for tech security practices

• South Indian Bank (SIB) was awarded with ISO 27001: 2013 certification for its Information Security Management System (ISMS). 
• The certification process involved an extensive audit, conducted by British Standards Institution (BSI) against the criteria set out by the ISO 27001:2013 standards on various domains of IT functions. 
• The award demonstrates SIB’s total commitment to benchmarking technology framework and processes with international standards and commitment to long term vision for security best practices. 
• SIB already has received ISO 9001 Quality Management certification for its Credit Department, Personnel Department and Data Centre.
•  ISMS is set of policies and procedures for systematically managing an organization’s sensitive data.
•  Its goal is to minimize risk and ensure business continuity by pro-actively by limiting the impact of a security breach.

RIL, SBI ink Subscription and Shareholders’ Agreement for payments bank JV

Telecom-to-energy conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL) and India’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) have signed Subscription and Shareholders’ Agreement to set up payments bank. 

As per the agreement, RIL will be the promoter with a 70 per cent equity contribution in the payments bank and SBI as joint venture will have 30 per cent equity contribution.

Background

• RIL-SBI combine was among the 11 entities that were in August 2015 were given licence by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to start a payments bank.
•  So far two of these – Cholamandalam Investment and Finance Co and Sun Pharma, IDFC Bank and telecom operator Telenor have decided to shelve plans of launching payments bank. 

About Payments banks 

• Payments banks are small deposit-taking institutions that can accept deposits (initially up to 1 lakh rupees per individual). 
• Besides, they will offer Internet banking, facilitate money transfers and sell insurance and mutual funds by piggy-backing on existing retail or other networks. 
• They can also issue ATM/debit cards, but not credit cards. However, they are also not allowed to lend. Instead, they can invest 75% of their deposits in short-term government bonds.

Axis Bank launches India’s first certified green bond at London Stock Exchange

Axis Bank has launched India’s first internationally-listed certified green bond to finance climate change solutions around the world at London Stock Exchange (LSE). 

The proceeds of the bond will be invested by Axis Bank in green energy, transportation and infrastructure projects. It will play important role in reinforcing India’s commitment to produce 175,000 MW of renewable power by 2022. 

The green bonds of Axis Bank were certified by the Climate Bonds Standards Board. It has raised 500 million dollars at the LSE after it launched. This is the first green bond of Axis Bank issued within its 5 billion dollars Medium Term Note (MTN) programme, which has also has been listed entirely on LSE.

 What are Green Bonds?

 Bonds basically are debt instruments which help issuer to get capital while the investors receive fixed income in the form of interest. In case of Green Bonds, the issuer gets capital from the investors only if the investment (capital) is being raised to fund green projects relating to renewable energy or emission reductions etc.