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‘Banks morally bound to reduce lending rates’
Chennai: Even though the general feeling is that the commercial banks are now morally bound to reduce their lending rates following the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) decision to cut its key lending rates, it may not happen soon, say industry experts.
“The banks are now morally bound to reduce their lending rates. Only then other lending organisations — housing finance, non-banking finance companies (NBFC) — would be able to cut their rates,” a top official of a housing finance company told media preferring anonymity.
“The National Housing Bank (NHB), the refinancing agency for housing finance companies, too has raised funds from market borrowing. So unless its own borrowing rates come down, NHB may not be able to pass on the benefit,” he added.
However, the bankers are non-committal on cutting their lending rates.
Welcoming the RBI’s decision to cut its key lending rates by 25 basis points, SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said: “Our bank will take an appropriate call of a cut in base rate by looking at all evolving circumstances.”
In January 2015, when RBI cut its rates for the first time this year, banks did not reduce their base rates.
Getting some positive cues from the national budget tabled last week, and sensing an economic recovery, the RBI cut the repurchase (repo) rate has been cut to 7.5 percent from 7.75 percent, while the reverse repo rate has been adjusted to 6.5 percent from 6.75 percent.
“Banks may not be in a position to announce rate cuts immediately. They will discuss the issue with their asset-liability committee and come at a decision,” Srinivas Acharya, managing director, Sundaram BNP Paribas Home Finance told IANS.
According to Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank, the central bank presumably took comfort from an improvement in the quality of government spending that the 2015-16 budget unveiled and the soft consumer price index print for January.
He pointed out that the cash reserve ratio (CRR) and the statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) were kept unchanged at four percent and 21.5 percent respectively.
This retention of CRR and SLR rates will not release any additional funds into the financial system.
Barua said Wednesday’s move is the second rate cut by the central bank outside the policy review (after a rate cut on 15 January 2015) .
“While the rate action is appropriate, we aren’t quite convinced of the merits of its timing,” Barua said.
He said the shift in the central bank’s strategy to make out of turn rate cuts something of a habit is likely to increase market volatility instead of anchoring it.
“The out of policy move, in our view, highlights a sense of urgency that can only be associated with the RBI realizing that it could in fact be ‘behind the curve’ in terms of monetary policy action,” he said.
According to him there is a prospect of another three repo rate cuts (75 bps) over the remainder of calendar year 2015 instead of our earlier view of another two cuts (50 bps).
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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