Publication: Dvara Research

The Future of Finance Initiative (FFI) is housed within the IFMR Finance Foundation (IFF) and aims to promote policy and regulatory strategies that protect individuals accessing finance given the sweeping changes that are reshaping retail financial services in India. Our vision is for every individual to have universal access to suitable financial services using a range of channels that enable them to transact securely and confidently.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the Master Directions on Issuance and Operation of Pre-paid Payment Instruments (PPIs) in India (Draft Circular) on 20 March 2017.

Following our initial post on a brief comparison of grievance redressal mechanisms existing in India for financial services, at first glance it can be seen that there is considerable variation in the process elements among the various sector ombudsmen.

This is the first of a two-part blog series on the state of Grievance Redress in the Indian Financial System.

Our comments in response to the Draft Rules are presented in two sections below. In the first section titled “I. Overarching Comments”, we raise two broad points on (1) extending the data protection principles consistently to avoid regulatory gaps, and (2) the need for regulatory coordination to avoid dual regulation, mitigate potential capacity constraints for MeitY and any adverse impact on the ease of doing business for pre-paid instrument (PPI) issuers. In the second section titled “II.

On 8 March 2017, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) released a set of draft rules for security of prepaid payment instruments (Draft Rules), inviting comments by 20 March 2017.

In the first post of this two-part series, we tracked the explosive rise of the P2P lending market in China, which took place in the absence of any regulations.

Since 2011, China’s P2P lending market has witnessed unprecedented growth. However, numerous high profile platform failures prompted the Chinese authorities to come out with a host of regulations at the end of 2016.

In this post we assess the state of bank credit depth for the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and the variation in credit depth across the 75 districts of UP during the 2004-12 period.

In the second post of our two-part series on Monetary Policy Transmission, we take a closer look at the impediments to policy transmission in India and also list the recent measures taken by RBI/Government to overcome these impediments.