Category: Opinions

Our society operates on the basis of trust. We use this trust every day. To build friendships, to buy and sell things, to vote, to claim protection and benefits from the State when they are due.

India’s financial sector has been a gung-ho adopter of technology. But design of technology and finance have hardly reflected users’ lived realities.

It provides no guidelines to account for minimum consumption by households, despite Supreme Court rulings on this.

Information from individuals is often stated to be the fuel that will power our new digital economy. As India powers into the information age, a key issue facing policymakers is the regulation of the use of this personal information.

Individuals and households need access to reliable financial services like a safe and accessible place to save and affordable credit.

India is a bank-dominated financial system with about two-thirds of all financial assets in the economy belonging to the banking sector.

The new regime must be one that can hold all entities to a common standard of institutional conduct in how they deal with the individual customer, including how they sell products.

At least 988 million Indians–more than the population of Europe and 75% of all Indians–are not covered by any form of life insurance, and an Indian is assured of only 8% of what may be required to protect a family from financial shock following the death of an earning member, according to our analysis of government data and industry data.

Several studies have found that the Indian banking sector, while having a large number of players, has monopolistic competition.

NBFCs are particularly vulnerable to wholesale funding constraints in the form of high and volatile borrowing costs