Atul Karmarkar.Com

Surprising I know.. for a bank which used to focus on customer delight. I’ve been a happy customer for over a decade now. However, events over the past few months have left me feeling not so happy with HDFC Bank and their services / policies in general.

Across the world, and particularly in India, using a credit card to shop online has always been fraught with danger, though you’re just as likely to have your card cloned when paying a bill at a restaurant.

Ah.. Finally, SEBI has cracked the whip on AMCs, asking them to get in shape their audio-visual ads for mutual funds. Readers know what kind of ads these are; on radio or TV, and said with an extremely hurried tone like someone just pressed the fast forward button.. :-p

Intuit Inc. recently launched its first India-focused product, Intuit Money Manager, an addition to the personal finance software market.

Morningstar Inc, a Chicago based independent investment research company has commenced operations in India. Aditya Agarwal has been appointed as the Managing Director of the company in India. Agarwal was one of the founders of MutualFundsIndia.com (later acquired by ICRA).

SBI Mutual Fund has launched an equity–based micro SIP called SBI Chota SIP. 

In July last year, the EPFO had appointed HSBC AMC, ICICI Pru AMC, Reliance AMC and SBI as fund managers to manage a part of it’s overall corpus, the main objective being an improvement in returns on EPFO’s investments.

With effect from April 01, cash withdrawals from bank will not attract tax. This is following abolition of the banking cash transaction tax (BCTT) in the Union Budget 2008-09.

Insurance behemoth Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has launched it’s credit card in association with Corporation Bank, who is the card issuer. They have formed a separate company, LIC Credit Cards Services, to manage this new business. The company will be headed by its Director and Chief Executive Hemant Bhargav.