Financialising the economy

The sector is expected to outperform

Even as large parts of the broader Indian corporate world struggle to return to historical levels of earnings, the financial sector appears to be doing so effortlessly. As this newspaper has reported, the share of banks, financial services and insurance, or BFSI, and stock broking in aggregate corporate profits hit a record high, namely 41.5 per cent, during the second quarter, July-September, of this financial year. This is well above its usual level. In fact, it is almost twice the historical 10-year average for the financial sector’s share of corporate profits, which is 21.8 per cent. The 450 companies in