(1888PressRelease) May 08, 2012 – IDBI Bank has been adjudged winner under Development Finance-Led Poverty Reduction category for its “Rural Transformation Fellowship Program (RTFP)” in the ADFIAP (Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia the Pacific) Awards 2012 in Istanbul, Turkey.

ADFIAP Awards recognize and honor banks which have undertaken and/or assisted projects that have created a development impact in their respective countries. The Bank also received the “Best Website” Award at the ceremony. Shri B.K. Batra, DMD, IDBI Bank receivd the award at the 35th ADFIAP Annual Meetings in Istanbul”.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri B K Batra said “Through RTFP, IDBI Bank aims to bring unbanked and under-banked populace within the ambit of formal banking system, thereby increasing their access to formal financial services, opportunities to build savings, make meaningful investments on matters related to their livelihood and harness their earning capacity and entrepreneurial talent.

This Award by ADFIAP at a prestigious international forum is recognition of our endeavor to emerge as a bank for all.”

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It used to be that unscrupulous salesmen would try to sell you the bridge; nowadays, they’ve climbed a rung lower — they’re trying to sell you the public trust water flowing under the bridge. A recent website, thebaybank.org, has planted a giant “For Sale” sign on the Chesapeake Bay and the stage is now set to create a marketplace out of this sacred common resource, with the bay being sold off credit-by-credit.

So what exactly do you get when you buy a credit on Bay Bank’s website? You don’t actually get a cup of bay water. The water bottling companies have already figured out how to commoditize our water resources by pouring it into containers and selling it in the supermarkets. Bay Bank actually promotes a much more insidious way to market our waterways — they’re facilitating the sale of the right to pollute the bay with more of the same contaminants that are already threatening the very future of this important watershed.

Here is how water pollution trading — also known as water quality trading — is supposed to work: Instead of recognizing that waterways are owned by everyone as a public trust and enforcing the prohibition on polluting our water, these market-based approaches allow some polluters to claim they’ve decreased their pollution and then sell that alleged decrease, in the form of pollution credits, to other polluters who want to increase their pollution.

Bay trading proponents claim that this pollution peddling scheme creates a financial incentive to get the agricultural industry, the biggest polluter in the Bay region and the anticipated generator of most of the credits, to finally clean up its act. The real dark side of this water pollution trading business, however, is that they’re selling a right that doesn’t even exist; under the Clean Water Act, any water pollution is illegal. Water pollution trading turns a crime into a commodity.

Sadly, there aren’t even any indications that water pollution trading will have any beneficial impact on Bay water quality. Water pollution trading has never worked anywhere else. These water privateers also ignore the fact that the Bay industry has already been handed a bunch of voluntary financial incentives over the past 30 years to stop polluting, and none of them have worked.

The reality seems that trading has nothing to do with cleaning up the Bay and everything to do with further deregulating industry and handing our common resources over to companies for profit. It is part of a push to financialize nature by giving each aspect of nature a monetary price, a value, thus locking natural resources management into the vagaries of the market for generations to come.

And then there’s the money…

Water pollution trading has the potential to make some people rich. Aggregators’ only role is to gather up credits from farms that may or may not have reduced their pollution and pass those credits onto power plants and other industries who want to dump a little — or a lot — more pollution into our communities. These middlemen are there to skim some profits off the surface of the Bay while peddling poisons around the state.

There’s also a lot of federal tax dollars being dumped into the trading scheme, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture sowing many millions of dollars in trading seeds around the country in various water pollution pilot programs. In the Bay, the USDA just recently announced it is spending $10 million to promote water pollution trading and even some big environmental NGOs are lining up for payday.

Water pollution trading is creeping into the non-regulatory landscape across the country and in the Bay watershed. That’s good news for those who are looking to game the system and profit off the losses of others, but bad news for anyone who cares about water quality, the sanctity of our public trust resources and the ongoing suffering of disadvantaged communities.

This was originally posted at Food Water Watch’s blog.

Follow Wenonah Hauter on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/@foodandwater

(1888PressRelease) May 04, 2012 – Fairmont, MN – Profinium Financial asks consumers, “Do you Kasasa?” as it becomes the next financial institution in Minnesota to launch the country’s most innovative financial products.

Kasasa® is a new brand of free checking and savings accounts that pays consumers to use their account with what interests them most-high interest or automatic savings. These accounts, combined with the personal service that only community financial institutions can deliver, are offering residents a better checking account option than the megabank experience.

“Consumers deserve to wake up to happier days of banking and leave behind the nightmare of megabank fees and mistreatment. We are pleased to be the first in Truman to offer these unique products,” said Marques Doppler, CEO at Profinium Financial “Kasasa delivers what research shows people really want but believe they can’t have-great financial products with the personal service of a community based financial institution.”

Profinium Financial is offering two Kasasa financial products, Kasasa Cash? and Kasasa Saver?. All Kasasa products are free, reward-based accounts, with no minimum balance to earn the rewards, no monthly service fee, free online banking and nationwide ATM fee refunds.

Kasasa Cash – A free checking account that rewards consumers with high interest for every month they qualify.

Kasasa Saver – A free, high interest saver account linked to a Kasasa Cash checking account. The interest and ATM fee refunds earned in the Kasasa Cash are automatically deposited into the Kasasa Saver account when the account holder qualifies. The balance in the Kasasa Saver account also earns a high rate of interest.

To receive the Kasasa account benefits, each monthly qualification cycle account holders are asked to do a few simple things like, receive an eStatement, use a debit card a minimum number of times, and have an electronic transaction (such as direct deposit) post to and clear their account. If an account holder does not meet the qualifications in a given month, Profinium Financial will alert the individual, who will be eligible the following month for the benefits.

“Extensive research has shown us that consumers would prefer to do business with community financial institutions, but feel they would lose access to products,” continued Doppler “Kasasa is opening people’s eyes to a new banking model where no sacrifices are necessary. It’s a win-win because account holders get innovative products and personalized service.”

In 2009, Kasasa was piloted in six other markets across the U.S. In just the first two months of offering Kasasa, participating community financial institutions reported growth rates upwards of 150% on new account openings and 372% in deposits at institutions focused on deposit growth.

Kasasa is being introduced with an aggressive, highly engaging marketing campaign. It comes to life through a fresh mix of eye-popping advertising, the likes of which exceed the typical megabank’s high-budget programs. The ads feature America’s top slam poets www.kasasa.com/news-and-media/advertising riffing lyrical threads around the theme of “Do you Kasasa?”

Kasasa is distributed to Profinium Financial from BancVue, the leading provider of innovative products, dynamic marketing, and data-driven consulting solutions to community financial institutions nationwide to help them win the war against the megabanks.

For more information on Kasasa accounts, consumers can visit www.profinium.com or www.kasasa.com/profiniumfinancial.

Do you Kasasa?
Kasasa® is the first national brand of the most innovative checking accounts available today. The accounts, offered exclusively by the finest community financial institutions, are designed to be the first and only accounts that actually take an interest in their account holders by rewarding them to use their account with what interests them most-high interest, cash back, automatic savings, money to donate to charity or iTunes® or Amazon.com downloads. Kasasa, developed and distributed by BancVue, marries innovative banking products with the personal touch of community financial institutions. For more information, visit www.kasasa.com.

Contact:
Katie Weathers
CSG PR
3225 East 2nd Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
(404) 791-8245
kweathers ( @ ) csg-pr dot com
http://www.csg-pr.com

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OUTLOOK — By Mohammed Al Balushi — Creative ideas always govern the world. In 1939 a Turkish man, named Luther Simjian came up with an idea of having a hole-in-the-wall machine that would allow bank customers to make their financial transactions. However, this dream came true in the late sixties when Barclays bank first installed the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) in United Kingdom. Currently, there are approximately 1.6 million ATMs in the world. It is witnessed that the technology has brought many changes in business life.
Through ATMs customers do many banking transactions, such as (Cash withdrawal, cash deposit, cheque deposit, transferring funds from one account to another within the same bank, request for mini statement, change password, payment of utility bills, and many others). Launching ATMs in banking sectors is one of the great revolutions where people save time and allows banks to focus on customers’ care. ATMs have reduced the crowd in bank branches, which is an advantage for it gives the branch staff and the management time to think more strategically on how to bring new business and introduce new schemes for valuable customers.
Valid questions that might be asked are: Are customers’ finance and lives really safe by doing the banking transactions through ATMs? Will banks lose money if there is a fraud in ATMs? Banks and their customers have been victims in many countries in the world in ATM frauds. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), organisations worldwide lose an estimated five per cent of their annual revenues to fraud. An ATM fraud is one of those.
Fraudsters have their own tips and strategies to commit ATM fraud. One of the first ATM fraud occurred in 1993 in Manchester, in United Kingdom, where a gang installed a fake ATM in the shopping mall to steal customers’ information, and the plan succeeded.
There are several techniques which thieves use for ATM fraud. For instance the Lebanese loop: where you try to insert your ATM card into the machine and you face some technical errors in the machine and meanwhile a stranger comes and offers you a help saying: “I faced similar problem” and asks you to reinsert your card and Personal Identification Number (PIN). He notes your PIN while you are attempting to do the transaction. Finally, your card gets stuck without completion of the transaction. You assume that the card is stuck while in reality it has not.
The stranger has set the ATM machine like that. Once you leave, he will come and take out the card and the PIN which has already been noted by him.
At the end you will become a victim. Some of the ATM fraud techniques are card jam, card swap, violence, where you are physically attacked by fraudsters who damage the ATM.
Like many countries’ ATMs, Oman’s ATMs were also attacked by fraudsters. In 2008, as reported by authorities concerned 37 bank ATMs were detected with scamming devices. In 2011 the same incidents occurred again.
Combating ATM fraud is a great challenge for banks. Initially, it is the banks’ responsibility to educate their customers, because most of the customers don’t know banking transactions and they also don’t know what the risks are while doing banking transactions through ATMs.
Banks are entitled not only to sell their products but also to safeguards customers’ deposits, provide financial advice and make customers understand everything regarding their products and services. ATM is one of the facilities provided by banks to their customers, which has a little risk.
Therefore, banks should educate their customers on for example; What is an ATM? Why use an ATM? How to use an ATM card? How to secure your PIN? What to do when the ATM card is lost?
Customers do have some responsibilities too, to safeguard themselves and their money against robbery. They must carefully listen to instructions they receive from banks and adhere to and ask the right questions so as to not become victims.
One of the important elements in combating ATM fraud is the awareness. Banks should begin creating awareness to their valuable customers covering entire Oman, and citizens should make an effort to update themselves on what’s happening around the world. They should ask and share information with others.
The authorities concerned always played a vital role safeguarding Oman and its public. It will be advisable if these authorities come forward as usual and create more awareness for the same.