Disbursement of Yearly Loan Statement in physical form

As we all know in India, there are many senior aged citizens who are not a part of Digitization i.e. they do not use Internet, emails, social media networks etc. Almost each household would have some sorts of Loans with a Bank or any other loan disbursement institutions and these senior citizens also form a part of these loans.

 

There are many difficulties in collecting loan statement from bank or other loan disbursement institutions because whenever they visit these entities, many a times they have to come out empty handed. Reason behind is some time printer is not working and on other occasion they will give some other excuses. Also at this age visiting branches or offices of such institutions is also full of stress for senior aged persons.

 

Due to whaterver reason SMS facility is now a charged service [ in banks ] whereas we don't have any transaction except EMI payment hence we do not opt for this service though in our opinion when banks are earning from Borrowers i.e. those who have taken loan and paying timely interest etc. then to these customers i.e. borrowers they should not charge for SMS in acknowledging EMI payments.

 

It is interesting to note that basis instructions from RBI, IBA had requested all its members to issue operational guidelines vide its circular dated 13th November 2009 so as to there is a system for providing borrowers with account statement on annual basis. Subsequently, this was also part of the recommendations of Damodaran Committee Report – A.3.iv – Loan Statement. However in absence of proper monitoring it did not get implemented which is an honest ground reality.

 

In view of above, RBI should issue fresh guidelines to all loan providers such as banks, NBFC companies and other institutions / societies etc to disburse physical statement of Loan Account atleast once after completion of financial year.i.e. after 31st March and also put proper mechanism to monitor its rightly implementation i.e.

 

1) A dedicated RBI department should monitor physical loan statement dispatch for next three years then from fourth year it will become practice.

 

2] The dedicated RBI team should ask all loan providers to provide delivery confirmation in the month of April every year as to how many Loan Accounts are there and what percentage of statement dispatch was successful.

 

This would help in improving KYC of customers whom the statement was not delivered due to address change, door close, consignee shifted, no such consignee etc. These customers can in turn be reached out via sms to update their current address.

G D Binani

Bikaner