BANKING
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked non-banking finance companies to allow their customers to prepay their floating rate loans without charging a penalty. The banking regulator has already barred banks from charging prepayment penalty on floating rate home loans.
The banking regulator has allowed mobile telephone companies and super market chains to apply for setting up of payment banks, which will offer a limited range of products such as acceptance of demand deposits and remittance of funds. The government has floated the concept of payment banks and small banks to further the cause of financial inclusion.
The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has asked life insurers to follow the existing procedure of obtaining approval before introducing new immediate annuity products in the market.
Insurers will, however, have the flexibility to vary annuity rates by 10% without any prior approval provided the change is due to changing interest rates scenarios to enable the insurers to change annuity rates so as to have an efficient asset and liability management.
PHARMA
The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority has capped the prices of 108 drugs used to treat diseases ranging from diabetes to HIV. The new price caps came into effect from July 11. Earlier, the government had implemented the drug price control order covering all 348 national essential medicines under its ambit in July 2013.
