The Government on Wednesday emphasised Unified Lending Interface (ULI) as a critical Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for the lending ecosystem, underscoring the need to scale it up.

M Nagaraju, Secretary, Department of Financial Services (DFS) and T Rabi Sankar, Deputy Governor (DG), RBI, co-chaired a meeting with the MD and CEOs of select banks, NBFCs and NABARD at RBI Mumbai to review the progress of Unified Lending Interface (ULI).

MD and CEOs of 12 Public Sector Banks, 18 Private Sector Banks, three Small Finance Banks, six NBFCs and DMD, NABARD were present at the meeting.

The DFS Secretary emphasised ULI as a critical Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) for the lending ecosystem and underscored the need to scale it up, enable end-to-end digital loan journeys, leveraging data/services available through ULI, according to the Department of Financial Services (DFS).

He further advised the MD and CEOs to monitor the progress on a monthly basis. All the lenders yet to join the initiative were advised to join the platform at the earliest.

DG, RBI urged lenders onboarded to scale up their operations and adopt ULI as the default gateway for providing rule-based loans and enable straight-through processing of loan journeys wherever feasible.

Lenders were advised to nominate a nodal officer to coordinate with the RBI, according to the DFS.

Last month, the DFS at the Ministry of Finance convened a high-level meeting in New Delhi on scaling up ULI.

The ULI is a technology-based initiative to 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 participants included senior officials from various ministries/ departments of the Government of India, state governments, the Reserve Bank of India and the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub.

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.