The Reserve Bank of India is working on establishing a cloud facility for banks and financial entities in the country to enhance security, integrity and privacy while using various public and private cloud facilities.
With the financial sectors maintaining “an ever-increasing volume of data”, the new initiative is also expected to facilitate scalability and business continuity.
The central bank has assigned Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBI to set up and operate the facility and eventually transfer the operation to a separate entity owned by the financial sector participants.
RBI has not disclosed any specific launch date for the cloud facility, other than that it will be “rolled out in a calibrated fashion in the medium term”.
It has also unveiled plans to develop fintech repository to capture “essential information about fintechs including their activities, products and technology stack” for the benefit of regulators and stakeholders.
The RBI said the aggregated data will “aid in designing appropriate policy approaches”, and hopes to have the repository set up its Innovation Hub by April 2024.
The central bank is now also bringing digital loan aggregators also known as online loan comparison platforms under a “comprehensive regulatory framework”, which it says will promote operational transparency, customer centricity and more informed consumer decision-making.
Web aggregators bring together loan offers from multiple lenders on an electronic platform enabling borrowers to choose the best available loan option. They have been accused of charging high interest rates and using illegal recovery measures.
The new framework is focused on the digital lending ecosystem of RBI’s regulated entities and the lending service providers engaged by them to extend various permissible credit facilitation services.
