Category: Opinions

Social enterprises will have to conform to much higher standards of reporting than they are conventionally used to.

As an impact metric, it is relevant for financial inclusion and other development programmes

DBT schemes are meant to ride on digital rails to facilitate smooth direct cash transfers. However, transfers are not always smooth.

By requiring only limited public reporting on asset quality, banks in India have enjoyed a level of opacity that banks in other jurisdictions do not

While the system was rightly designed to eliminate ghost beneficiaries, the impact of exclusion errors needs to be professionally and independently evaluated in detail.

An RBI Working Group has suggested that lending service providers be disallowed from providing credit enhancements such as FLDG (first-loss-default-guarantee). However, a risk-proportionate regulation of FLDG could address its risks, while allowing the ecosystem to benefit from innovation.

In India, the direct benefit transfer (DBT) system has gained enormous acceptance as a method of delivering welfare to the most deserving. It has been the main instrument of governments’ social protection response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study is authored by Aarushi Gupta, senior research associate at Dvara Research. Bindu Ananth, co-founder and chair of Dvara Trust. Bindu Ananth and Hasna Ashraf are fellow, Lancet Citizen’s Commission on Reimagining India’s Health Systems.

Even when women are not the primary borrowers of formal finance, studies note that they remain responsible for ensuring timely repayments.

Digital formal finance can potentially reduce the physical and social distance between women and financial services.