Public Sector Bank Reforms Agenda – EASE 4.0

Public Sector Bank Reforms Agenda – EASE 4.0

Part of: Prelims and GS – III – Banking sector 

In news: Union Finance Minister has unveiled a set of reforms for public sector banks (PSBs) called EASE 4.0 (Enhanced Access and Service Excellence). 

• These reforms have been rolled out by the government to further the agenda of customer-centric digital transformation and embed digital and data into PSBs’ way of working’.
• EASE 4.0 commits PSBs to tech-enabled, simplified and collaborative banking.

What reforms fall under EASE 4.0?

The EASE 4.0 reforms looks at four key initiatives for public sector banks to adopt: 

• Smart lending backed by analytics; 
  • Dial-a-loan for doorstep lending
  • Credit@Click: End to End digital retail and MSME lending for 
  • Analytics based credit offers
• 24×7 banking with resilient technology and cloud based IT systems
  • Deeper penetration of Mobile & internet banking 
  • Cloud-based IT Systems and improved cyber resilience
  • Process automation
• Data enabled agriculture financing; 
  • Dial-a-loan for agri loans
  • Partnership with AgriTechs for data exchange
  • Automated Processing & sanctioning

• Collaborating with the financial ecosystem.

• • Digital Payments in semi-urban and rural areas
  • At scale delivery of doorstep banking services
  • Co-lending with NBFCs

The annual report for the PSB Reforms Agenda EASE 3.0 for 2020-21 was also released.

• The overall score of PSBs increased by 35% between March-2020 and March-2021,
  • The average EASE index score improved from 44.2 to 59.7 out of 100. 
• The highest improvement is seen in the themes of ‘Smart Lending’ and ‘Institutionalising Prudent Banking’.
• Credit@click was a flagship initiative under EASE 3.0: Nearly 4.4 lakh customers have been benefited through such instantaneous and simplified credit access
• Nearly 72% of financial transactions are now happening through digital channels. 
• PSBs are now offering services across call centres, Internet banking, and Mobile banking in 14 regional languages such as Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, etc.
• For continual improvement in coverage under financial inclusion initiatives, there was a 13% growth in transactions provided by Bank Mitras in rural areas and 50% growth in enrolments in Micro personal accident insurance in Q4FY21 compared to Q4FY20.