In its effort towards financial inclusion, the Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao said women demanding banking services is the biggest accomplishment in the last four years.
He was speaking after the frontline managers’ conference on business correspondent (BC) model in Pune.
Illegal schemes
The Governor said the RBI was distressed by a number of illegal schemes across the country.
“These are illegal and unscrupulous schemes, promoted by fraudsters, which are beyond the purview of any regulator. People are lured into it with exorbitant interest rates and they lose their entire savings. This is distressing,” Subbaro said.
On the demand to standardise the remuneration to most BCs, Subbaro said it is decided by individual banks and the RBI cannot micro manage banks.
As regards Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs), he said more than 10 crore farmers will stand to benefit in the next two years. .
According to the RBI, of the 600,000 villages, banking services have penetrated into more than 200,000, through technology and BC model.
Gold coins
Though the Governor said the RBI cannot ban banks from selling gold coins, they have been asked not to aggressively market them.
“We don’t want to choke the use of gold as a collateral for loans but we don’t want it to become a business,” he said.
The risk profile of banks with regard to gold loans is relatively small, he said.