Lack of a unified regulator
Indian Financial Code proposed moving away from sector-wise regulation to a more unified one, with RBI and a unified regulator to reduce regulatory arbitrage
Lack of a unified redressal agency
IFC proposed a Financial Redressal Agency to resolve consumer complaints across turfs. But the needle hasn’t moved at all on this investor-friendly agency
Banks continue to mis-sell and cheat
Bank lockers and loans are still linked to opening FDs or buying insurance. Mis-selling of insurance and churning mutual funds continues. The redressal system is broken
Debt funds took undue risk
Not defining exposure to single groups or labelling the categories properly allowed funds to take highly risky debt in categories that were not perceived as risky
Life insurance plans still die early
More than half the polices sold die before completing five years. High first-year costs and low surrender values in early years make these policies a money-losing trap
Delayed and stuck real estate projects
Project delays, runaway promoters, siphoned-off money and fraud defined real estate in this decade even as 560,000 units are still stuck and 24.7 million are unoccupied
EPFO’s equity investments opaque
Four years after EPFO started investing in equity, investors have little information. Worse, investments are not yet unitized, making the system open to risk
Scams under the nose of regulators
Satyam, NSEL, Karvy are all names associated with scams in which investors lost money. Each of these events led to tighter regulations but the damage was already done
NPA crisis of Indian banks far from over
PNB’s ₹2,617 crore NPAs, PMC’s bad loans to a real estate firm, 10 Indian banks under-reporting NPAs of ₹24,000 crore, resulted in low policy rate transmission
Pure life cover is still not sold
Cost changes in Ulips in 2010 led the market towards high-cost, opaque and unfair traditional plans that form 85% of the market. Pure term plans are an estimated 4%
Source: livemint
