RBI chalks out financial inclusion strategy for 2024

News:The Reserve Bank of India has released the national strategy for financial inclusion.

Facts:

About the strategy:

• The national strategy for financial inclusion sets forth the vision and key objectives of financial inclusion policies in India.
• It also aims to provide access to formal and affordable financial services; broaden and deepen financial inclusion and promote financial literacy and consumer protection.

Key features of the strategy:

• The strategy has said that wider acceptance and the adoption of digital payments will play a key role towards financial inclusion.
• The strategy aims to see that every adult had access to a financial service provider through a mobile device by March 2024.
• It has called for increasing outreach of banking outlets of scheduled commercial banks among others to provide banking access to every village within a 5 km radius of 500 households in hilly areas by March 2020.
• It has also set a target that every willing and eligible adult who has been enrolled under the Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana should be enrolled under an insurance scheme and a pension scheme by March 2020.
• A strong regulatory and legal framework is also needed for protecting the interests of the customers, promoting fair practices and curbing market manipulations.
• It has also suggested in making the public credit registry fully operational by March 2022 so that authorised financial entities can leverage on the same for assessing credit proposals from all citizens.

Additional information:

About Public Credit registry:

• Public Credit Registry (PCR) has been set up by the Reserve Bank of India(RBI).
• It refers to an extensive database of credit information of borrowers that is accessible to all lending and credit decision-making institutions.
• It will be a single point of mandatory reporting for all information about each loan notwithstanding any threshold in the loan amount or type of borrower.

About Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY):

• The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was launched in 2014 with an aim to provide universal access to banking facilities to all households.
• The objective of PMJDY is to ensure access to various financial services like (a)availability of basic savings bank account (b)access to need based credit (c)remittances facility (d)insurance and (e)pension to weaker sections and low income groups.