Short-term pain in insurance could be huge

The stock market may be on a roll and banking stocks may be on fire fuelled by the strong growth in the economy. But small investors have pretty much stayed away from the party, hurting players like Kotak Mahindra Bank that runs a fairly big brokerage business. Nevertheless, India s fourth-largest private sector lender has done well to grow its consolidated bottom line by 92% in 2009-10 to Rs 1,231 crore. Dipak Gupta, executive director, tells Saikat Das and Shobhana Subramanian that with the loan book growing at 30% plus, future profits should be far less dependent on the capital market. ...

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