This program focuses on solutions that speak to the changing landscape of issues pertaining to financial customer protection in India. It studies how institutional practices in customer protection can build trust and confidence to increase uptake and usage of formal financial products and services among low-income, rural, and women consumers.
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The growing prominence of Responsible and Trustworthy AI (RTAI) frameworks reflects increasing recognition of these harms. Contemporary RTAI approaches recommend safeguards across the lifecycle of AI systems to ensure explainability, transparency, contestability, auditability, and human oversight, while reducing the potential for bias and discrimination.
The Draft Amendments provide detailed guidance to relevant regulated entities (REs) on the loan recovery process, including mandatory certification for recovery agents, safeguards against harassment, grievance redressal mechanisms, and compensation for wrongful use of technology-based mechanisms.
This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, "Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India". In this blog, we examine issues related to measurement and empirical strategy.
This is Part 2 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, "Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India". In this blog, we turn to some of the broader claims advanced in the report regarding the wider benefits of microfinance and assess whether these claims hold up when situated in a broader empirical context.
This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on the recently released NCAER-MFIN report, "Assessing the Effectiveness of Regulated Small Borrowing in India" (March 2026).
In response to the public consultation, we argue that borrower over-indebtedness is a customer protection concern that must be explicitly recognised in the revised E&S Framework.
In this response, we present our comments to the paper. We divide our comments into three sections.
Static safeguards, targeting discrete acts of fraud, will only spur fraudsters to probe other vulnerabilities
Liquidity support by the Centre may offer symptomatic relief, but India’s microfinance sector needs a structural recast. Without reforms to address recurring cycles of over-lending and loan stress, another credit guarantee package will only postpone the next crisis in this fragile sector.
In this response, we present four recommendations to the Draft Amendments.
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.
