RBI Issues a Statement Setting Out various Development & Regulatory Policy Measures

Press Release: 2023-2024/23, dated: 06.04.2023

The RBI has issued a statement setting out various developmental and regulatory policy measures relating to

(i) Financial Markets;

(ii) Regulation and Supervision; and

(iii) Payment and Settlement systems.

The key highlights include

(a) Developing an Onshore Non-deliverable Derivatives Market,

(b) Development of a Centralised Web portal for the public to search unclaimed deposits

(c) Enhancing the efficiency of Regulatory Processes,

(d) Operation of Pre-Sanctioned Credit Lines at banks.

1. Developing an Onshore Non-deliverable Derivatives Market

With a view to develop the onshore INR Non-deliverable foreign exchange derivative contracts (NDDCs) and to provide residents with the flexibility to efficiently design their hedging programmes, RBI has decided to permit banks with International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) Banking Units (IBUs) to offer INR NDDCs to resident users in the onshore market.

2. Enhancing the efficiency of Regulatory Processes

The Union Budget for 2023-24 has announced the need to simplify, ease and reduce cost of compliance by financial sector regulators within laid down time limits to decide the applications under various regulations. Now, RBI has decided to develop a secured web based centralised portal named as ‘PRAVAAH’ which will gradually extend to all types of applications made to RBI across all functions.

3. Development of Centralised Web portal for Public to search unclaimed deposits

The deposits remaining unclaimed for 10 years in a bank are transferred to the “Depositor Education and Awareness” (DEA) Fund maintained by the RBI. The RBI has been taking various measures to ensure that newer deposits do not turn unclaimed and existing unclaimed deposits are returned to the rightful owners or beneficiaries after following due procedure.

On the second aspect, banks display the list of unclaimed deposits on their website. In order to improve and widen the access of depositors / beneficiaries to such data, RBI has decided to develop a web portal to enable search across multiple banks for possible unclaimed deposits based on user inputs.

4. Grievance Redress Mechanism relating to Credit Information Reporting

With the increase in customer complaints regarding credit information reporting and the functioning of credit information companies (CICs), the RBI has decided to put in place a comprehensive framework for strengthening and improving the efficacy of the grievance redress mechanism and customer service provided by the credit institutions (CIs) and CICs.

5. Operation of Pre-Sanctioned Credit Lines at Banks through the UPI

Presently, the UPI transactions are enabled between deposit accounts at banks, sometimes intermediated by pre-paid instruments including wallets. It has now been proposed to expand the scope of UPI by enabling transfer to / from pre-sanctioned credit lines at banks, in addition to deposit accounts.

In other words, UPI network will facilitate payments financed by credit from banks. This can reduce the cost of such offerings and help in development of unique products for Indian markets.

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