29th Meeting of Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC)

Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs chaired the 29^th meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC), in Mumbai. Union Minister of State for Finance Shri Pankaj Choudhary was also present along with FSDC members.

The FSDC, deliberated on issues related to macro financial stability and India’s preparedness to deal with them. In light of the analysis of cybersecurity regulations, sectoral preparedness, and the recommendations of Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) 2024-25, the FSDC considered strengthening the cyber resilience framework of the Indian financial sector through a financial sector-specific cybersecurity strategy.

The FSDC discussed issues relating to formulating a strategy for implementing the past decisions and the budget announcements, which included:

• establishing appropriate framework by regulators for evaluating and enhancing responsiveness of regulations and subsidiary instructions;
• to take necessary steps to reduce the unclaimed assets in the financial sector (banks deposits, dividends, shares, post office accounts, insurance and pension funds etc.) and the expeditious and seamless refund of such assets to rightful owners;
• prescribing common KYC norms, simplification and digitalisation of the KYC process including digital onboarding for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) including PIOs and OCIs, in the Indian securities market;
• analysing trends in financing flows as part of strategy to increase the investment ratio
• taking measures to improve the reach and scope of factoring services and effective use of account aggregator networks.

The FSDC deliberated on the emerging trends from domestic and global macro-financial situation and stressed upon the need to be vigilant. The Council recognised the need for proactive efforts to mitigate potential risks to financial stability while adopting adequate safeguards for financial system’s resilience. The members decided to strengthen the inter-regulatory coordination for wider development of the financial sector.

The Union Finance Minister exhorted the Council to take proactive steps to ensure that citizens should have a seamless experience w.r.t KYC processes across the financial sector.

The Union Finance Minister also urged the regulators and departments to expedite the process of refund to rightful owners of unclaimed amounts by holding special district level camps. This drive is to be conducted in coordination with RBI, SEBI, MCA, PFRDA and IRDA along with banks, pension agencies, insurance companies etc. The unclaimed amounts comprise of deposits in banks; unclaimed shares and dividends are managed by IEPFA; and unclaimed insurance and pension funds are with IRDAI and PFRDA respectively.