The Reserve Bank of India on 8th October 2021 has issued a statement on developmental and regulatory policies which sets out various developmental and regulatory policy measures relating to liquidity measures, payment and settlement systems debt management; and financial Inclusion and customer protection.
Key highlights from various regulatory policies:
- RBI has extended the tap on Special Long-Term Repo Operations (SLTRO) for small finance banks (SFBs) till 31st December 2021.A three-year SLTRO facility of ₹10,000 crore at the repo rate was made available to SFBs in May 2021 to be deployed for fresh lending of up to ₹10 lakh per borrower.
- In view of the importance of the IMPS system in processing of domestic payment transactions, it is proposed to increase the per-transaction limit from ₹2 lakh to ₹5 lakh for channels other than SMS and IVRS. This will lead to further increase in digital payments and will provide an additional facility to customers for making digital payments beyond ₹2 lakh. Necessary instructions in this regard would be issued separately.
- The Reserve Bank’s Regulatory Sandbox (RS) has so far introduced three cohorts. Six entities have successfully exited the First Cohort on ‘Retail Payments’ while under the Second Cohort on ‘Cross Border Payments’ eight entities are undertaking Tests. The application window for the Third Cohort of ‘MSME Lending’ is currently open.
- With a view to preparing the fintech eco-system, it is proposed that the topic for the Fourth Cohort would be ‘Prevention and Mitigation of Financial Frauds’. The focus would be on using technology to reduce the lag between the occurrence and detection of frauds, strengthening the fraud governance structure and minimising response time to frauds. The application window for this cohort would be opened in due course.
- RBI has decided to introduce the Internal Ombudsman Scheme (IOS) for certain categories of NBFCs which have higher customer interface. The IOS for NBFCs, which will be on the lines of IOS for banks and non-bank payment system participants, will require select NBFCs to appoint an Internal Ombudsman (IO) at the top of their internal grievance redress mechanism to examine customer complaints which are in the nature of deficiency in service and are partly or wholly rejected by the NBFCs. Detailed instructions in this regard will be issued separately.
