India’s Most Recent Microfinance Crisis: Theory, Empirics & Learnings

This paper focuses on Part III of the IBC, which deals with natural persons, proprietorships, and personal guarantors for corporate debt.

In this blog post, we analyse the changes in the direction and weigh them through the lens of customer protection and long-term sustainability. We also offer suggestions on streamlining the KYC updation (re-KYC) exercise without adding to systemic risks.

On 13 December 2024, the Ministry of Finance, Government of India (MoF) released the draft Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Act. This aligns with recommendations made in the Report of the Working Group on Digital Lending.

This study sought to understand the impact of the new regulations on the microfinance sector through the lens of different categories of stakeholders – customers, leadership at microfinance institutions (MFIs) and intermediating staff.

Debt distress among microfinance borrowers is on the rise, sufficiently so that it may be characterised as a crisis for the sector. This is driven by factors across the supply- and demand-sides, as well as factors inherent in the nature of the credit cycle, where periodic booms and busts have been present throughout history. To address this, we propose two sets of recommendations for the regulator: a set of recommendations that can be initiated in the short-term and another set that can be initiated over the medium-term.

The Government of India called for pre-budget consultations in early January 2025. Dvara Research was one of the invitees, and we are once again grateful to policy makers for reposing trust in our work. In the past as well, Dvara Research has been a partner and advisor of choice for key policy-making bodies in the country.