The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finally announced and put out the names of applicants for Payments and Small Finance Banks on its website. In all, 113 applications for small finance banks and payment banks were received by RBI. Out of these, for Payments Banks it got 41 applications and for Small Finance Banks it received 72 applications.
There were lots of surprise applicants for the new phase of banking licences, while Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) teamed up with state-run behemoth SBI to apply for a payments bank licence. Bharti Airtel, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Airtel M Commerce Services (AMSL), applied for a Payments Bank licence with Kotak Mahindra Bank as a partner. Department of Post, Tech Mahindra, Videocon Group and stock exchange NSE have joined big corporates to seek entry into banking business.
Not only big corporate, but as many as 12 individuals like ex-Fino Managing Director Manish Khera and V Balakrishnan former CFO of Infosys have applied under Small Finance Bank category. On the same time six applications from individuals like Kishore Biyani of Future Group, M G George Muthoot, chairman of Muthoot Group and Dilip S Shanghvi, MD of Sun Pharma were submitted for Payments Bank.
RBI has constituted two separate committees and Usha Thorat, former RBI deputy governor has been appointed the chairperson of external advisory committee for Small Finance Bank with other members on the panel for Small Finance Bank including M S Sahoo, secretary of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, M S Sriram professor at IIM Bangalore, and M Balachandra, chairman of National Payments Corp of India. For the external advisory committee on Payment Bank, Nachiket Mor, a director on RBI’s central board will be heading the panel. With other members including Roopa Kudva, former MD&CEO of Crisil, Shubhalakshmi Panse, for CMD of Allahabad Bank and Deepak Phatak, chair professor IIT Bombay. The RBI though has not suggested any timeframe for the committee to accept or reject the applications.