New Delhi, 14th August 2023: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is embarking on a pioneering pilot initiative aimed at revolutionizing the credit process by introducing a ‘Public Tech Platform’. This innovative platform is designed to streamline the credit process by facilitating the seamless transfer of essential digital data to lenders.
During the initial trial phase, the platform will focus on supporting financial products such as Kisan Credit Card loans (up to Rs 1.6 lakh per borrower), dairy loans, collateral-free MSME loans, personal loans, and home loans. The RBI’s official release states that this initiative is a collaborative effort involving participating banks.
The key objective of the Public Tech Platform is to establish connections with various essential services, including Aadhaar e-KYC, land records sourced from state governments (including Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra), satellite data, PAN validation, Aadhaar e-signing, and housing/property search information.
The RBI has also communicated that, based on the insights gained from the pilot phase, the initiative’s scope will expand to encompass a wider range of financial products, data providers, and lenders.
The pilot launch of the Public Tech Platform is scheduled for August 17, 2023. With India rapidly embracing digitalization, the country is witnessing a surge in digital public infrastructure adoption. This environment fosters innovation among various financial entities such as banks, NBFCs, FinTech companies, and startups, encouraging them to devise creative solutions for payments, credit, and other financial operations.
In the domain of digital credit delivery, essential credit assessment data are scattered across different sources including central and state governments, account aggregators, banks, credit information agencies, and digital identity authorities. However, the segregation of these data sources often leads to delays in the credit assessment process.
The Public Tech Platform aims to tackle this challenge by facilitating a seamless flow of critical digital data to lenders, thereby enabling efficient credit delivery. This comprehensive digital platform will adopt an open architecture, employ open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and adhere to standards that enable all stakeholders in the financial sector to integrate seamlessly using a ‘plug and play’ approach, as outlined by the RBI.
The platform’s rollout will follow a methodical approach as part of the pilot project, encompassing both access to information providers and utilization cases. Its implementation is expected to enhance the efficiency of the lending process, minimize costs, expedite disbursements, and promote scalability.
The development of the Public Tech Platform is being overseen by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the central bank. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das introduced this groundbreaking initiative while unveiling the bi-monthly monetary policy on August 10th.
