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IBPS Clerk: General / Financial Awareness for IBPS Clerk

IBPS Clerk · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

General / Financial Awareness for IBPS Clerk

IBPS Clerk General/Financial Awareness is a Mains-only section: 50 questions, 50 marks, 35 minutes. It mixes banking and financial awareness with current affairs from roughly the last five to six months, plus static GK, government schemes, appointments, sports and awards.

Core rules

  • Monetary policy: the RBI’s repo rate is the rate at which banks borrow overnight from the RBI against securities; reverse repo absorbs liquidity; MSF is an emergency borrowing window; CRR is cash held with the RBI; SLR is liquid assets held by the bank.
  • Banking terms: know NPA, CASA, KYC, Basel III, priority-sector lending, negotiable instruments and account types.
  • Payments: NPCI operates UPI, IMPS, RuPay, NACH and AePS. RTGS is real-time and high-value; NEFT settles in batches; IMPS is immediate.
  • Schemes: link each scheme to its ministry and beneficiary group.
  • Current affairs: revise RBI governors, bank heads, headquarters, summits and indices.

Worked example

If the RBI raises the repo rate by 25 basis points, banks’ cost of overnight funds rises. Lending rates tend to move up, credit growth may slow and inflation pressure may ease. The reverse repo is not the rate banks pay to borrow; it is the rate the RBI pays to absorb liquidity.

Traps

Swapping repo and reverse repo; confusing CRR with SLR; calling Budget measures “monetary policy”; attaching a scheme to the wrong ministry; using outdated rates; confusing similar scheme names.