Reserve Bank of India devises new plan for fin inclusion

Chennai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in consultation with other financial services regulatory bodies, has launched a National Strategy for Financial Inclusion that will help provide access to formal financial services in an affordable manner by 2024.

The strategy recommends increasing outreach of banking outlets of Scheduled Commercial Banks, Payments Banks and Small Finance Banks to provide banking access to every village within a five km radius or hamlet of 500 households in hilly areas. Necessary infrastructure should be created to move towards a less cash society. Financial service providers have to strengthen outreach through virtual modes including mobile apps and move towards an increasingly digital and consent-based architecture for customer onboarding.

Further, every willing and eligible adult enrolled under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana should be enrolled under an insurance scheme and pension scheme. Public Credit Registry should be made fully operational by March 2022 so that authorised financial entities can leverage on the same for assessing credit proposals from all citizens. All the relevant details pertaining to the ongoing skill development and livelihood generation programmes should be made available to the new entrants at the time of account opening.

The details of the account holders, including unemployed youth and women who are willing to undergo skill development might be shared to the concerned skill development centres or livelihood mission. Awareness on financial literacy, managerial skills, credit and market linkages should be developed by National Skill Development Mission.

Financial literacy modules should be used for orientation of children, young adults, women, new workers, entrepreneurs, senior citizens etc. Focus should be on process literacy along with concept literacy and the reach of Centers for Financial Literacy should be expanded at every block in the country.

Internal Grievances Redressal Mechanism of financial service providers should be strengthened and a robust customer grievance portal or mobile app should act as a common interface for lodging, tracking and redressal status of the grievances.

With advancements in Geo-Spatial Information Technology, a robust monitoring framework leveraging on the said technology can be developed for monitoring progress under financial inclusion with special emphasis given to aspirational districts, North Eastern Region and Left-Wing Extremist affected Districts.

A monitoring framework and a GIS dashboard also can be developed.