One for all and all for one

Ever been troubled by cross selling? Cross selling is when you take one product from a company and give your personal details and soon find...

Ever been troubled by cross selling? Cross selling is when you take one product from a company and give your personal details and soon find the entire lot of group companies selling their products to you. This happens more in the financial sector where financial conglomerates have fingers in banking, credit cards, home loans, mutual funds, insurance and other personal loans. So you take a credit card and give your mobile number and by the next day you begin to get calls selling funds, insurance and home loans. And then they pass it on to others and soon the entire lot is calling you, on the mobile at all hours.

All this will stop if the Reserve Bank of India has its way. The RBI has asked the Chief Executives of banks not to share customer data will their affiliates and subsidiaries for cross selling purposes. The RBI holds that the use of any personal information for other than ‘know-your-customer’ purposes is a breach of customer confidentiality. If the banks want to collect such information, it has to be only after proper disclosure and after the consent of the customer. ICICI Pru Life Insurance is one company that removed the cross selling data sharing agreement with group companies from its contract after a customer complained. Are there others good enough to do the same? Contact the banking ombudsman in case you are upset with such cross selling. Or write in to us at ymm@expressindia.com.

RBI plays Robin Hood for the individual

RBI is sure it wants to protect the rights of the individual as both a lender and a borrower. During the Credit Policy press briefings the RBI said that it plans to lay down a transparent and comprehensive policy setting out the rights of depositors in general and small depositors in particular. This is needed as the large institutions have the dice loaded in their favour. They gamble on the fact that scattered customers have no way to come together specially when the amounts in question are usually petty. This policy will cover all aspects of operations of deposit accounts. RBI has already moved on the rights of small borrowers and lenders and the measures implemented are the drop-box facility for cheques and a facility for acknowledgement of cheques through regular collection counters, delivery of cheque books over the counters on request, issue of statement accounts at monthly intervals, informing existing account holders at least a month in advance of any change in the minimum balance in savings accounts and charges for non-maintainance.

Other issues that RBI could perhaps look into are: the cosy relationship between Direct Selling Agents and banks where the buck spins between the two with nobody claiming responsibility. The other issue is of the fine print in loans to retail borrowers that is totally skewed in favour of the lender – how come the individual as a depositor does not ask the bank to sign a 52 page document while putting money in a fixed deposit, like he does when he sings up for a car loan?

EXCLUSIVE: EC brings in feature to check misuse of identity to seek voter list deletions

Political Pulse54 min ago

The Election Commission has launched a new 'e-sign' feature on its portal and app to prevent fraud. This comes after allegations of misuse of online voter deletion forms in Karnataka. The feature requires voters to verify their identity using their Aadhaar-linked phone numbers, reducing the possibility of fraud.

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