Transforming Credit Delivery in India: The Unified Lending Interface Meeting, ET LegalWorld
The officials of the finance ministry and the Reserve Bank held a meeting with various stakeholders, including state government representatives, on ways to scale up Unified Lending Interface (ULI) as it has the potential to transform the credit delivery mechanism.
ULI is a new digital public infrastructure (DPI) designed to streamline the lending process, similar to UPI in the payment space. It is a technology platform built to facilitate easy access to authenticated data from various sources, through standardised APIs to which all lenders can connect seamlessly through a 'plug-and-play' model.
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ULI will make frictionless credit available to every Indian, and to further the government's broader vision of digital empowerment, financial inclusion , and last-mile service delivery, the finance ministry statement said.Financial Services Secretary M Nagaraju and RBI Deputy Governor T Rabi Sankar co-chaired a meeting attended by senior officials of 13 departments and 11 state governments, among others.ULI is envisioned as a DPI for credit delivery designed to integrate technology, data, and policy into one seamless platform, Nagaraju said.As UPI revolutionised the payment ecosystem, the ULI is poised to transform credit delivery, making it inclusive and redefine how credit is accessed and delivered across India, he said.The rich, trusted and high-value datasets available with the Central government ministries/departments and state governments, when leveraged appropriately by lenders, can power data-driven, inclusive, and faster lending, especially for underserved borrowers.During the meeting, the RBI Deputy Governor highlighted that ULI is a DPI of national importance and urged the participants to onboard their datasets on the platform to tap into its potential, it said.The Deputy Governor also pointed out that the ULI has the potential to surpass the transformative impact of UPI.Nagaraju urged the stakeholders to nominate nodal officers for fast-tracking the integration of government datasets with ULI in order to make ULI India's next UPI on the credit side.He also emphasised that appropriate integration of various separate similar initiatives operating to serve specific purposes with ULI for deriving synergy to build a unified and resilient national lending ecosystem, while preserving their identity.
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