The Reserve Bank of India will launch a Unified Lending Interface (ULI) soon that will transform the lending ecosystem in the country like the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has done for the payments system, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Monday.
Addressing an event in Bengaluru, Das said the central bank last year launched the pilot of a technology platform which enables frictionless credit. “From now on, we propose to call it the Unified Lending Interface (ULI),” he said.
The ULI will facilitate seamless and consent-based flow of digital information, like PAN and Aadhaar records, previous lending history, income and credit records of individuals, as well as land records of various states, from multiple data service providers to lenders. This will reduce the time taken for credit appraisal, especially for smaller and rural borrowers.
According to the Governor, the ULI architecture will have common and standardised APIs (Application Programming Interface), designed for a 'plug and play' approach to ensure digital access to information from diverse sources.
“Based on our experience from the pilot project, a nation-wide launch of the ULI will be done in due course. Just like UPI transformed the payments ecosystem, we expect that ULI will play a similar role in transforming the lending space in India,” the Governor said.
The Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which was launched in 2016, has revolutionised the way Indians transact. It allows users to make payments by simply using a Virtual Payment Address (VPA), eliminating the need to share sensitive bank details.
Das said the ‘new trinity’ of JAM-UPI-ULI will be a revolutionary step forward in India’s digital infrastructure journey. JAM refers to Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile.
Like UPI, the Unified Lending Interface is also expected to be user-friendly and reduce the complexity of multiple technical integrations. It is expected to enable borrowers to get the benefit of seamless delivery of credit, quicker turnaround time without requiring extensive documentation.
“By digitising access to customer’s financial and non-financial data that otherwise resided in disparate silos, ULI is expected to cater to large unmet demand for credit across various sectors, particularly for agricultural and MSME borrowers,” Das said.