The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been planning to onboard select Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) onto its innovative Unified Lending Interface (ULI).
Similar to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), ULI is a digital public infrastructure that aims to streamline and revolutionize the loan disbursal process across India.
This development follows a virtual meeting organised by the RBI’s FinTech Department and the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) in collaboration with NUCFDC.
The meeting saw participation from key representatives of 16 prominent cooperative banks, including chairpersons, CEOs, and IT heads from institutions such as SVC Cooperative Bank, TJSB Sahakari Bank, Janata Sahakari Bank (Pune), Gayatri Cooperative Urban Bank, Adarsh Cooperative Urban Bank, Cosmos Cooperative Bank, Rajkot Nagarik Sahakari Bank, and Kurmanchal Nagar Sahakari Bank, among others.
Following the meeting, RBIH sent the ‘ULI Lender’s Kit,’ a comprehensive document containing technical guidelines and the roadmap for onboarding to the banks. As the next step, participating banks have been instructed to designate a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) and begin preparations for integration with the ULI platform.
The National Urban Cooperative Finance and Development Corporation (NUCFDC) plays a crucial role in this initiative. Acting as the umbrella organization, NUCFDC provides strategic and operational support to UCBs, ensuring a smooth onboarding to the ULI ecosystem. The collaboration between regulatory bodies and cooperative banks aims to enable a uniform and efficient digital lending process.
The onboarding of Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) onto the ULI platform offers several significant advantages. Firstly, UCBs can leverage ULI to become digital lenders, thereby reaching new customer segments and expanding their digital presence.
Additionally, ULI’s ready digital infrastructure allows UCBs to expedite loan approval processes, making credit delivery faster and more cost-effective.
Furthermore, UCBs can align with ongoing efforts to modernise and digitise the cooperative banking sector, enabling them to diversify their credit portfolios and scale operations more efficiently.
ULI is envisioned as a secure, end-to-end digital framework that consolidates essential lending services, including Aadhaar authentication, PAN and GST verification, KYC, credit bureau checks, and consent-based data sharing. This consolidated approach eliminates the need for multiple verifications across departments, ensuring 100 per cent data validation under RBI’s regulatory oversight.
With integration points such as NSDL, UIDAI (Aadhaar), and major credit bureaus, ULI is poised to transform the way loans are processed and delivered, marking a new era of digital innovation in India’s banking sector.
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