The new platform currently in the pilot stage will “facilitate seamless and consent-based flow of digital information, including even land records of various states, from multiple data service providers to lenders," said RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das on Monday said the central bank’s new Unified Lending Interface (ULI) platform aimed at “enabling frictionless credit” will be launched in due course. The platform is currently in the pilot stage started in August last year.
Speaking at the RBI@90 Global Conference on “Digital Public Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies” in Bengaluru, the governor said by digitising access to customer’s financial and non-financial data that otherwise resided in disparate silos, ULI is expected to cater to large unmet demand for credit across various sectors, particularly for agricultural and MSME borrowers.
The new platform will “facilitate seamless and consent-based flow of digital information, including even land records of various states, from multiple data service providers to lenders. This cuts down the time taken for credit appraisal, especially for smaller and rural borrowers,” said Shaktikanta Das.
With its plug-and-play approach, ULI will enable borrowers to get the benefit of seamless delivery of credit, quicker turnaround time without requiring extensive documentation, the governor added.
Underscoring UPI’s role in transforming the payments ecosystem in the country, Shaktikanta Das said ULI will play a similar role in transforming the lending space in India.
“The ‘new trinity’ of JAM-UPI-ULI will be a revolutionary step forward in India’s digital infrastructure journey.”
The platform was announced by the central bank in August last year being developed by the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) as an end-to-end digital platform with an open architecture, open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and standards, to which all financial sector players can connect seamlessly.
This was based on the learnings the pilot project for digitalisation of Kisan Credit Card (KCC) loans of less than Rs 1.60 lakh started in September 2022. The pilot tested end-to-end digitalisation of the lending process in a paperless and hassle-free manner and enabled doorstep disbursement of loans in self-service mode without any paperwork.
