RBI proposes to compensate customers up to Rs 25,000 loss due to fraud

Reserve Bank Governor Sanjay Malhotra on Friday announced a new framework to compensate customers up to an amount of Rs 25,000 for loss incurred in small-value fraudulent transactions.

Announcing the last bi-monthly policy for the current financial year, Malhotra said, "we will also publish a discussion paper on possible measures to enhance the safety of digital payments. Such measures may include lagged credits and additional authentication for specific class of users like senior citizens."

For customer protection, he said, RBI will issue three draft guidelines: one, relating to mis-selling; two, regarding recovery of loans and engagement of recovery agents; and three, on limiting liability of customers in un-authorised electronic banking transactions.

"It is also proposed to introduce a framework to compensate customers up to an amount of Rs 25000 for loss incurred in small-value fraudulent transactions," he said.

The extant instructions on limiting the liability of customers in unauthorised electronic banking transactions were issued in 2017, which deal with scenarios and timelines for zero/limited liability of a customer.

In view of the rapid adoption of technology in the banking sector and payments systems, since issuance of these instructions, the existing instructions have been reviewed, he said.

Accordingly, he said, the draft revised instructions, including a framework for compensation in case of small value fraudulent transactions, would be issued shortly for public consultation.

Observing that misselling financial products and services by any regulated entities has significant consequences for both customers as well as on such entities, Malhotra said, there is a felt need to ensure that third party products and services that are being sold at the bank counters are suitable to customer needs and are commensurate with the risk appetite of individual clients.

"It has therefore been decided to issue comprehensive instructions to REs on advertising, marketing and sales of financial products and services. Draft instructions in this regard would be issued shortly for public consultation," he said.

He further said different sets of instructions are applicable to different categories of REs with respect to the engagement of recovery agents and conduct related aspects of loan recovery presently.

It has now been decided to review and harmonise all the extant conduct related instructions on engagement of recovery agents and other aspects related to recovery of loans, he said.

Accordingly, the RBI Governor said, the draft instructions in this regard would be issued shortly for public consultation.

Announcing Mission Mission Saksham, the RBI Governor said it is focussed on capacity building for Urban Cooperative Banks.

Stressing that the Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks (UCBs) are vital institutions for promoting financial inclusion and serving the unbanked, he said, securing their next phase of growth would depend on developing stronger skills and competencies, along with technical capabilities and operational resilience in them.

To serve this objective, he said, the Reserve Bank will soon launch Mission SAKSHAM (Sahakari Bank Kshamta Nirman) -- a sector-wide capacity-building and certification framework.

The capacity building of the sector will be implemented through a large number of physical training programmes as well as a scalable learning platform, to cover about 1.40 lakh participants, across functions, he said.

The Reserve Bank would endeavour to conduct these training programmes at locations close to participating UCBs, with content delivery in regional languages to the extent feasible, he said.

The mission will be pursued in partnership with the umbrella organisation of UCBs and national/state federations.