Connect 2 Regulate

The Reserve Bank of India today placed on its website a draft circular on Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments. Comments / feedback on the draft Circular are invited from banks by November 19, 2025. Additional comments or any attachments may also be submitted by email with subject line “Feedback on Draft circular on Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments”.

Lending to counterparties who are related or connected to the lenders either through ownership stake in the lending entity or through their ability to control and influence the lending decisions entail conflict of interest or moral hazard issues for the lenders. The draft Directions being issued provide a harmonised, principle-based framework to be adopted by REs for managing such risks, suitably rationalising the existing provisions.

As announced in the Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies dated October 01, 2025, it has been decided to rationalize regulations pertaining to External Commercial Borrowing (ECB) included in the Foreign Exchange Management (Borrowing and Lending) Regulations, 2018 issued under FEMA, 1999. Salient features of proposed regulations are as under:

BSBD Account is a savings bank account which was introduced with the objective of promoting financial inclusion. The extant instructions on BSBD account require banks to provide certain minimum facilities free of charge, without the requirement of minimum balance, to the holders of such accounts. The ongoing digitalization in the banking sector necessitates a BSBD account that is in sync with the customer’s changing requirements.

The Guidelines on Enhancing Credit Supply for Large Borrowers through Market Mechanism were introduced in August 2016 with an objective to address the concentration risk arising from the aggregate credit exposure of the banking system to a single large corporate and encourage such large corporates to diversify their funding requirements.

With the objective of enforcing credit discipline among borrowers as well as to facilitate better monitoring by lenders, certain restrictions were placed on the operation of Current Accounts (CA), Cash Credit Accounts (CC) and Overdraft Accounts (OD) (“Transaction Accounts”) offered by banks vide various circulars issued from time to time. Based on the experience gained and feedback received, these instructions have been reviewed and it is proposed to ease some of the stipulations and provide greater flexibility to the banks in this regard, particularly in case of borrowers being entities regulated by a financial sector regulator. Accordingly, the draft “Reserve Bank of India (Payments Banks – Transaction Accounts) Directions, 2025” has been issued for public comments.

With the objective of enforcing credit discipline among borrowers as well as to facilitate better monitoring by lenders, certain restrictions were placed on the operation of Current Accounts (CA), Cash Credit Accounts (CC) and Overdraft Accounts (OD) (“Transaction Accounts”) offered by banks vide various circulars issued from time to time. Based on the experience gained and feedback received, these instructions have been reviewed and it is proposed to ease some of the stipulations and provide greater flexibility to the banks in this regard, particularly in case of borrowers being entities regulated by a financial sector regulator. Accordingly, the draft “Reserve Bank of India (Rural Co-operative Banks – Transaction Accounts) Directions, 2025” has been issued for public comments.

With the objective of enforcing credit discipline among borrowers as well as to facilitate better monitoring by lenders, certain restrictions were placed on the operation of Current Accounts (CA), Cash Credit Accounts (CC) and Overdraft Accounts (OD) (“Transaction Accounts”) offered by banks vide various circulars issued from time to time. Based on the experience gained and feedback received, these instructions have been reviewed and it is proposed to ease some of the stipulations and provide greater flexibility to the banks in this regard, particularly in case of borrowers being entities regulated by a financial sector regulator. Accordingly, the draft “Reserve Bank of India (Urban Co-operative Banks – Transaction Accounts) Directions, 2025” has been issued for public comments.

With the objective of enforcing credit discipline among borrowers as well as to facilitate better monitoring by lenders, certain restrictions were placed on the operation of Current Accounts (CA), Cash Credit Accounts (CC) and Overdraft Accounts (OD) (“Transaction Accounts”) offered by banks vide various circulars issued from time to time. Based on the experience gained and feedback received, these instructions have been reviewed and it is proposed to ease some of the stipulations and provide greater flexibility to the banks in this regard, particularly in case of borrowers being entities regulated by a financial sector regulator. Accordingly, the draft “Reserve Bank of India (Local Area Banks – Transaction Accounts) Directions, 2025” has been issued for public comments.