“Recent spurt and popularity of online lending platforms/ mobile lending apps (‘digital lending’) has raised certain serious concerns which have wider systemic implications,” the central bank said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Against this backdrop, a Working Group (WG) is being set up to study all aspects of digital lending activities in the regulated financial sector as well as by unregulated players so that an appropriate regulatory approach can be put in place,” it added.
The move comes amid a growing outcry in the public surrounding reports of unethical collection practices, high interest rates and, the fraud and data risks surrounding the use of loan apps across India.
The six-member working group composes four central bank officials and is chaired by Jayant Kumar Dash, Executive Director, RBI. The working group has been asked to submit a detailed report on the matter within three months.
Others from the central bank include Ajay Kumar Choudhary, Chief CGM of Department of Supervision, P Vasudevan, CGM of Department of Payment and Settlement Systems, and Manoranjan Mishra, CGM of Department of Regulation.
Vikram Mehta, co-founder, Monexo and Rahul Sasi, a cyber security expert and the founder of CloudSEK are the external members of the working group. The working group has been asked to identify key risks emerging from these unregulated lending apps to consumers and suggest regulatory and statutory perimeters to address the issue.
“From a peripheral supporting role a few years ago, FinTech led innovation is now at the core of the design, pricing and delivery of financial products and services,” said the central bank in the statement.
“While penetration of digital methods in the financial sector is a welcome development, the benefits and certain downside risks are often interwoven in such endeavors. A balanced approach needs to be followed so that the regulatory framework supports innovation while ensuring data security, privacy, confidentiality and consumer protection,” RBI said.
The banking regulator in December had issued a “note of caution” to the public against the use of suspect loan apps offering instant loans albeit high interest rates.
Recently, several reports have surfaced of excess interest charged, additional hidden charges and unethical collection practices including misuse of agreements to access data on the mobile phones of the borrowers by the collection agents of these fintech lenders.
ET last month reported that over one-third of these customers had missed repayment deadlines owing to increased stress in several pockets of consumer economy recovering from pandemic-induced curbs.
In June, ET had also reported in detail about dozens of lending apps resorting to cyber-bullying and intimidation tactics to harass customers who were missing on such payments.
There is no official count of how many such digital lending apps exist. However, industry insiders peg the number at several hundreds. The digital lending apps predominantly target blue-collar and self-employed segments with the promise of easy liquidity.
However, on failing to repay on time the borrowers are sent fake legal notices. In some instances, family members of borrowers also have allegedly received reminder messages in a bid to socially intimidate the customers.
Only licensed banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) given authorization by the central bank can do public lending activities, as emphasized by RBI several times over last year. As per RBI guidelines, aggregators tying up with licensed banks and NBFCs would have to disclose upfront the nature of these tie-ups, to improve transparency.
