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National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2025-30

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has published National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI) 2025-30.

Financial Inclusion

  • The Committee on Financial Inclusion (Chairman: Dr C Rangarajan, RBI, 2008) defined financial inclusion as “the process of ensuring access to financial services, timely and adequate credit for vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low-income groups at an affordable cost”.
  • The Committee on Medium-Term Path to Financial Inclusion (Chairman: Shri Deepak Mohanty, RBI, 2015) viewed financial inclusion as, “convenient access to a basket of basic formal financial products and services that should include savings, remittance, credit, government-supported insurance and pension products to small and marginal farmers and low income households at reasonable cost with adequate protection progressively supplemented by social cash transfers, besides increasing the access of small and marginal enterprises to formal finance with a greater reliance on technology to cut costs and improve service delivery.”
  • Financial inclusion is referred in the targets of 8 out of 17 United Nations (UNs) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

NSFI 2019-2024

  • NSFI 2019-2024 was aimed at broadening, deepening, and accelerating financial inclusion alongside promoting financial literacy and consumer protection, with a view to promoting economic wellbeing, prosperity, and sustainable development. 
  • NSFI 2019-2024 had the following 6 strategic pillars (with 18 milestones) –
    • Universal access to financial services
    • Providing basic bouquet of financial services
    • Access to livelihood and skill development
    • Financial literacy and education
    • Customer protection and grievance redressal
    • Effective coordination
  • The 5-year period of NSFI 2019-24 witnessed significant improvements across the access, usage, and quality dimensions of financial inclusion.

NSFI 2025-30

NSFI 2025-30 has been framed under the aegis of Technical Group on Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy (TGFIFL) and approved by the Sub-Committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC-SC).

The timeline of NSFI 2025-30 is synchronized with the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development. The principle of universality: ‘Leave No One Behind’ and omni-dimensional development as the global agenda for 2030, aligns well with the NSFI’s strategic objectives intended towards ensuring wellbeing of people, especially the vulnerable and marginalised.

Objectives of financial inclusion under NSFI 2025-30

The objective of financial inclusion is ensuring availability of equitable, responsible, suitable, and affordable access to a bouquet of formal financial services, namely, savings, payments, remittances, credit, investments, insurance, and pension, across socio-economic and geographical strata, coupled with effective financial literacy, robust consumer awareness and customer protection measures.

Intended outcome of financial inclusion under NSFI 2025-30

Financial inclusion may lead to desirable outcomes in form of a quadrangle of financial safety, financial security, financial resilience, and financial discipline, in turn contributing towards overall wellbeing of people.

Financial Safety

 

 

 

Financial Security

 

EquitableAccess to a bouquet of formal financial servicesResponsible

 

 

 

SuitableAffordable
Financial Resilience

 

 

 

Financial Discipline

Vision of NSFI 2025-30

The vision of NSFI 2025-30 is to strengthen the financial inclusion ecosystem with the synergised efforts of stakeholders towards wellbeing of people by ensuring delivery of equitable, responsible, suitable, and affordable financial services duly supported by livelihood enablers, effective financial literacy, digital public infrastructure, and robust customer protection.

5 strategic objectives (Panch-Jyoti) of NSFI 2025-30

  • Strategic Objectives of NSFI 2025-30 – Elevating the State of Financial Inclusion through Panch Jyoti (पंच ज्योति) 
  • NSFI 2025-30 sets up the following 5 strategic and synergised objectives (Panch-Jyoti) –
    • Improving the availability and use of Equitable, Responsible, Suitable, and Affordable Bouquet of Financial Services to achieve Financial Safety and Financial Security for households and micro enterprises.
    • Adopting Gender-Sensitive Approach for Women-led Financial Inclusion and Differentiated Strategies for Improving Financial Resilience of Households, especially for the Underserved and Vulnerable segments.
    • Synergizing Livelihood, Skill Development and Support Ecosystem and its linkages with Financial Inclusion.
    • Leveraging Financial Education as a tool for promoting Financial Discipline.
    • Strengthening the Quality and Reliability of Customer Protection and Grievance Redressal Measures.
  • The strategic objectives under Panch-Jyoti have structured recommendations to be implemented through 47 action points. 
  • The focus of the recommendations is on enhancing the usage and quality dimensions of financial inclusion, while improving the last mile access and ensuring effectiveness and granularity in the monitoring and measurement mechanism.

Some of the action points of NSFI 2025-30

  • Ensuring availability of at least one banking outlet – branch / digital banking unit / fixed point business correspondent (BC) outlet in each revenue centre.
  • The existing scheme of incentives, under Financial Inclusion Fund (FIF), to BCs operating in Tier V & Tier VI centres in North Eastern States and other Hilly States / UTs (Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh & Uttarakhand) may be extended to all Fixed-Point BCs operating in Tier VI centres.
  • Reaching one billion users in digital payments ecosystem by December 2029.
  • Expanding and Deepening of Digital Payments Ecosystem (EDDPE) programme aims at providing every eligible individual in identified districts at least one mode of digital payments namely, debit / rupay cards, net banking, mobile banking, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Aadhaar Enabled Payments System (AePS) etc. EDDPE should aim to achieve – (i) 100% coverage in 80% of districts by March 2026, and (ii) 100% coverage in all identified districts by March 2027.
  • Awareness of AI powered language translation platforms like Bhashini may be promoted among users and financial service providers for its integration into financial services.
  • Ensuring at least 30% share of women BCs from the current level of around 15%, by December 2028. 
  • Operationalisation of payments fraud intelligence platform by December 2026.


References

Reserve Bank of India. (2025, December 01). 'National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI): 2025-30'. Retrieved from https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/PublicationReportDetails.aspx?UrlPage=&ID=1307

Reserve Bank of India. (2025, December 01). 'Press Release - National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI): 2025-30'. Retrieved from https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=61712


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