Independent Research and Policy Advocacy

Response to Niti Aayog’s Discussion Paper on “Digital Banks – A Proposal for Licensing and Regulatory Regime in India”

Identifying the Market Failure and Mis-identifying the Intervention The discussion paper highlights a ‘market failure’ in the debt market for MSMEs wherein incumbent banks are unwilling to lend to MSMEs, who are otherwise creditworthy, due to lack of documentation and thereby leading to suboptimal outcomes for both banks and MSMEs[3]. Adding to these frictions is […]

What is Social Protection?

Blog post series: This series of posts will attempt to do two things – first, to examine the definitional boundaries of social protection and where they relate to other financial services for low-income households, and second, to use this to arrive at a working definition of social protection for policymakers and research organisations such as Dvara Research. As a first step, we break down a few questions in this first post.

A Brief Comparison of the Bad Bank Experience across Jurisdictions

Bad Banks are typically Government sponsored Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARCs) setup with the primary objective of cleaning up bank balance sheets. Unlike private ARCs, the Bad Banks are setup as a one-time measure with the primary objective of reducing the build-up of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) post a financial or economic crisis.

Fintech in India: Can the trust stack up?

Providing a human interface at crucial touch points such consent, disclosure, and grievance redressal will allow for trust in fintech to rise, driving financial inclusion

Managed Competition – Revisiting Enthoven’s Principles

In this piece, we revisit Enthoven’s principles and propose a broader definition of the concept of managed competition in order that it may encompass other countries’ experiences that do not conform to a strict application of Enthoven’s concept.