RBI's regulation review authority moots periodic review of existing rules

Also suggests that regulatory instructions should contain a statement of objective underlying the rationale for their issuance, supplemented with FAQs/guidance notes and illustrations

The regulations review authority (RRA 2.0) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested that a periodic review of existing regulations should be undertaken to align them with evolving developments in the industry practices and financial landscape.

This is part of the RRA 2.0 recommendations on issues such as ease of compliance, reduction of regulatory burden, rationalisation of reporting mechanism, and streamlining instructions and communication. The RBI had set up RRA 2.0 last year to reduce the compliance burden on the regulated entities and streamline regulatory instructions.

The authority has also suggested that the regulatory instructions should contain a brief statement of objective underlying the rationale for their issuance, supplemented with FAQs/guidance notes and illustrations, wherever necessary.

It has suggested a separate web page, namely, ‘Regulatory Reporting’ in the RBI website so that all the information relating to regulatory, supervisory and statutory returns would be consolidated at a single source on the RBI website.

Further, the RRA recommended a complete elimination of paper-based returns and has identified 65 regulatory returns, which should either be discontinued or merged with other returns or shall be converted into online returns.

“It has also been recommended to shift from the current prescription of submitting data on a reporting fortnight basis to a system of reporting data on the 15th and last working day of every calendar month,” the authority said in its report. “This would improve inter-temporal comparison of banking data and other economic variables and improve data quality,” it said.

Further, the RRA has recommended a standardisation of circulars and creation of a consistent template. Also, master circulars issued by the central bank should be updated in a time bound manner and may eventually be converted into master directions, wherever feasible.

“While the revamp of the RBI website is expected to be completed soon, the RRA has recommended that all the contents posted on RBI website be updated on a real-time basis”, the authority recommended.

In the past, the RRA has recommended withdrawal of 714 regulatory instructions which have either become obsolete or redundant and have not been explicitly withdrawn.