If there are two things that repeatedly made news on the economic front during the last year, they have to be interest rates and inflation. Interest rates and inflation are in fact not standalone factors; interest rates are among the most actively used tools to contain liquidity in the system and  in turn has an effect on inflation.

Inflation has been riding high during the year; at the start it was at double digits and now it has moderated to around 9.35% levels.which is still higher than the average inflation of 6.5% p.a that is considered reasonable for a developing nation like India. In an effort to contain the upward spiraling inflation, the RBI increased interest rates, more than a dozen times in the last eighteen months. Although the investor benefited from yields from debt instruments becoming extremely attractive, for the borrower life just got progressively tougher!

Interest rates —

Last year, interest rates had a dream run. Fixed income investors emerged the much sought

"I applied for a personal loan and submitted required documents to the bank. After receiving the documents the banker intimated it to my wife that I had applied a loan of Rs.1.00 lakh. If the bank is going to reveal it to my wife, they should make it a condition that loanee should obtain permission from his wife?"

This email from an irate customer who had sought a personal loan from a bank reminded me once again how some processes outlive their utility.

The bank's verification system seems quite faulty in today's context when there are so many other check mechanisms at work. The bank employee's stand was that it's his duty to check the customer's house and reveal the matter to family members. But I feel that checking residential status is fine, but disclosing facts before family members is not warranted especially if customer has an objection.

One of the significant issues faced by the industry in the early wild- west days was what is referred to as "Skip" cases where the consumer took

I would like to discuss case of an old friend who was also a client, whom we were assisting (him and his spouse) in doing a comprehensive review of all their assets, liabilities, insurance policies and goals as well as a detailed financial plan to achieve their goals.

The said client is an NRI couple who had intuitively made several good moves. They owned a house in Mumbai, had no liabilities and enough life and health insurance. Moreover they have also accumulated reasonable amount of savings over the years. Being a childless couple, their only goal is to build a substantial kitty for their post retirement lives . My friend being only 46 years old, his retirement was still a good 12 years away. The only issue in their case was that all their savings were invested in bank fixed deposits. They were continuing to save a reasonable amount every month which he was willing to invest through a monthly SIP in an equity mutual fund. I pointed out to him that this clearly was not going to be