Finance Ministry Holds Meet On Scaling Up Unified Lending Interface

The finance ministry’s department of financial services (DFS) and officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) held a meeting with various stakeholders yesterday on scaling up the planned Unified Lending Interface (ULI).

ULI is a new digital public infrastructure aimed at transforming and streamlining credit delivery across India. This technology-driven platform is being developed to overhaul how credit (loans) is delivered and accessed across the country.

Currently, ULI is in its testing phase and its nationwide launch is awaited.

Participants at the meeting included M Nagaraju, secretary, department of financial services, RBI deputy governor T Rabi Sankar, senior officials from 13 ministries and departments of the Union government, 11 state governments and RBIH (Reserve Bank Innovation Hub).

During the meeting, top officials from central and state governments discussed strategies for scaling ULI and integrating it with existing government datasets and lending initiatives.

The deliberations concluded with a commitment to the following:

• Digitally integrate high-value datasets available with the central and state governments into ULI
• Nominate nodal officers from key stakeholder institutions to fast-track the integration of government datasets with the ULI
• Encourage state governments to intensify efforts to digitise and link land and other critical records
• Align existing lending initiatives with ULI to build a unified and inclusive credit delivery ecosystem

Speaking on the occasion, T Rabi Shankar said that as part of the RBI’s mandate to manage the country’s credit system, RBI aimed to bring innovation to the lending space.

M Nagaraju further added that ULI is envisioned as a digital public infrastructure in the lending space, designed to integrate technology, data, and policy into one seamless platform.

He said that as UPI revolutionised the payment ecosystem, the ULI is poised to transform credit delivery, making it inclusive and redefine how credit is accessed and delivered across India.

He emphasised that the rich, trusted and high-value datasets available with central government ministries/departments and state governments, when leveraged appropriately by lenders, can power data-driven, inclusive, and faster lending, especially for underserved borrowers.

It is pertinent to note that RBI piloted the ULI (originally known as the Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit) in August 2023. The pilot focused on streamlining and digitising credit delivery for products such as Kisan Credit Card loans, Dairy Loans, MSME loans, personal loans and home loans using integrated data sources like Aadhaar e-KYC, land records, PAN validation, and account aggregators.

Even last year in August, the Reserve Bank of India said it would soon launch a platform to offer credit to rural and small businesses.

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