Truncation is the process of stopping the flow of the physical cheque issued by a drawer at some point by the presenting bank en-route to the paying bank branch. In its place an electronic image of the cheque is transmitted to the paying branch through the clearing house, along with relevant information like data on the MICR band, date of presentation, presenting bank, etc. Cheque truncation thus obviates the need to move the physical instruments across bank branches, other than in exceptional circumstances for clearing purposes. This effectively eliminates the associated cost of movement of the physical cheques, reduces the time required for their collection and brings elegance to the entire activity of cheque processing.

Banks need to ensure compliance to all applicable statutory provisions, rules and regulations, various codes of conducts (including the voluntary ones) and their own internal rules, policies and procedures. It is, however, reiterated that compliance is a shared responsibility of the business units and the compliance function. Therefore, adherence to applicable statutory provisions and regulations needs to be the responsibility of each staff member of the bank and it is the work of the compliance function to ensure the same.

In some banks, there may be separate departments looking after compliance to different statutory and other requirements while the compliance function may be responsible for monitoring compliance with the regulations, internal policies and procedures and reporting to Management. The concerned departments would hold the prime responsibility for their respective areas, which should be clearly outlined, while compliance function would need to ensure overall oversight. If serious gaps are observed in such compliances, the compliance function should take necessary action to correct the compliance culture. There should also be appropriate mechanisms for co-operation among departments and with the Chief Compliance Officer.

Exchange Earners' Foreign Currency Account (EEFC) is an account maintained in foreign currency with an Authorised Dealer Category - I bank i.e. a bank authorized to deal in foreign exchange. It is a facility provided to the foreign exchange earners, including exporters, to credit 100 per cent of their foreign exchange earnings to the account, so that the account holders do not have to convert foreign exchange into Rupees and vice versa, thereby minimizing the transaction costs.

• The CIBs issued in 1997 provided inflation protection only to principal and not to interest payment.

• New product of IIBs will provide inflation protection to both principal and interest payments.

Ans. An AD bank must record valid LEI for cross border transactions of INR 50 crore and more undertaken through it on or after October 01, 2022. Post this, the AD bank must report the valid LEI for all cross border transactions, irrespective of the value of the transactions. However, if the AD bank already has a valid LEI of the entity, it must report it for all transactions irrespective of whether the entity has undertaken a transaction of INR 50 crore or above through it.

Commercial Banks : All commercial banks including branches of foreign banks functioning in India, local area banks and regional rural banks are insured by the DICGC.

Cooperative Banks : All State, Central and Primary cooperative banks, also called urban cooperative banks, functioning in States / Union Territories which have amended the local Cooperative Societies Act empowering the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to order the Registrar of Cooperative Societies of the State / Union Territory to wind up a cooperative bank or to supersede its committee of management and requiring the Registrar not to take any action regarding winding up, amalgamation or reconstruction of a co-operative bank without prior sanction in writing from the RBI are covered under the Deposit Insurance Scheme. At present all co-operative banks are covered by the DICGC.

Primary cooperative societies are not insured by the DICGC.

Ans : IDFs are investment vehicles which can be sponsored by commercial banks and NBFCs in India in which domestic/offshore institutional investors, specially insurance and pension funds can invest through units and bonds issued by the IDFs. IDFs would essentially act as vehicles for refinancing existing debt of infrastructure companies, thereby creating fresh headroom for banks to lend to fresh infrastructure projects. IDF-NBFCs would take over loans extended to infrastructure projects which are created through the Public Private Partnership (PPP) route and have successfully completed one year of commercial production. Such take-over of loans from banks would be covered by a Tripartite Agreement between the IDF, Concessionaire and the Project Authority for ensuring a compulsory buyout with termination payment in the event of default in repayment by the Concessionaire.

Let’s assume a bank has following maturity profile of borrowings:

Sr. No.	Original Maturity	Balance outstanding as a percentage of total funds (other than equity)	Cumulative weightage
1	5 years & above	15.1%	15.1%
2	3 years & above but less than 5 years	11.8%	26.9%
3	2 years & above but less than 3 years	9.3%	36.2%
4	1 year & above but less than 2 years	16.9%	53.1%
5	6 months & above but less than 1 year	24.3%	77.4%
6	91 days & above but less than 6 months	10.5%	87.9%
7	Up to 90 days	12.1%	100%
	Total	100%

In this case, the MCLR shall correspond to the weighted average of tenor of the first three time buckets.