Photo: Bloomberg

Some 40 per cent of India’s 1.2bn people have no access to banking services so you might expect newcomers to be crowding into an untapped market. But in the past twenty years, barely a dozen private-sector banks have been licensed in the country. And with stringent capital requirements, existing players aren’t finding it easy to expand their loan books, either.

In an attempt to improve financial inclusion, the Reserve Bank of India has issued guidelines for a fresh round of banks to be licensed – and the path is clear for India’s big corporate houses to apply. Continue reading »