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On 12 February 2026, Dvara Research organized Āśvasta 2026, a conference to mark the formal conclusion of a Gates Foundation grant received in November 2021 to study Financial Customer Protection in India
The conference was titled ‘Aśvasta’, a Sanskrit word meaning assured and anxiety-free. The name identifies the goal that financial customer protection is meant to serve for low income, rural and women customers. While India has made significant strides in advancing customer safeguards in financial inclusion, much remains to be done to bring these customer groups into a state of Aśvasta so that they may use formal financial products and services and truly benefit from them.
The conference delegates included representatives from other think tanks, multilateral agencies, impact investors, policy makers, industry associations, financial services providers, consumer advocacy organizations, and academics, consultants and experts from financial inclusion and social protection domains.
Over four years, the Centre for Customer Protection worked at the intersection of research, policy, and practice to translate principles of customer protection into implementable, scalable solutions.
The portfolio of research addressed themes of information asymmetry, grievance redress, fraud mitigation, market monitoring, data protection, product suitability, and emerging risks in digital finance.
Development of a Responsible and Trustworthy AI framework to support responsible digital lending practices
Redesign of UPI in-app grievance redress mechanisms to improve accessibility for constrained users
A proposed Digital Payment Infrastructure for fraud reporting and management
Behaviourally informed reforms to life insurance disclosure formats, subsequently reflected in regulatory changes
A machine-learning-based Debt Distress Detection Tool for early identification of borrower harm
Research on women’s money management practices to inform the design of more aligned digital financial tools
Across initiatives, the emphasis remained on field validation, stakeholder collaboration, and policy relevance.
The program operationalised an iterative action-research model initiating inquiry, designing interventions, field-testing solutions, validating outcomes, and preparing for scale. This approach sought to ensure that customer protection tools are contextually grounded, empirically tested, and adaptable across institutional environments.
Āśvasta 2026 marked the conclusion of one phase of grant-supported work, while reaffirming the continued importance of customer protection in advancing meaningful financial inclusion in India. Strengthening trust in financial systems remains foundational to enabling sustained participation by low-income and vulnerable customers.
The Centre for Customer Protection at Dvara Research will continue to build on these learnings, deepening engagement with regulators, financial service providers, and ecosystem actors to ensure that India’s expanding financial architecture evolves with customer well- being at its core.
To know more about the customer protection project click here
In all our research efforts, we strive to maintain an independent voice that speaks for the low-income household and household enterprises. Our ability to perform this function is significantly enhanced by our commitment to disseminate as a pure public good, all the intellectual capital that we create.
