Mumbai, February 10 The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday released draft amendment guidelines for lending, proposing to allow urban cooperative banks to double the share of unsecured assets to 20 per cent.
According to the draft guidelines for UCBs, the central bank is proposing to increase individual loan limits and rationalize the definition of unsecured advances, increase the individual loan limits for these advances, and revise the aggregate ceiling for such advances.
Regulated entities, stakeholders, and members of the public can submit their feedback on the draft by March 4, 2026, the RBI said.
The central bank proposed to double the aggregate ceiling of unsecured advances to 20 per cent, from 10 per cent earlier of total assets, the RBI said in a release.
"Provided that additional unsecured advances above this prudential ceiling shall be permitted only in respect of priority sector eligible loans, subject to a monetary ceiling of Rs 50,000 per borrower," RBI said.
Furthermore, the lending limit to nominal members for the purchase of consumer durables is also proposed to be enhanced to Rs 2.5 lakh per borrower, and the tenor and moratorium requirements for housing loans are proposed to be deregulated for Tier-3 and Tier-4 UCBs.
The RBI had announced the review of the lending norms for Urban Co-operative Banks in the February monetary policy.
During the monetary policy announcement, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra had said that to strengthen the managerial and technical capacity of the UCBs, the central bank will launch Mission-SAKSHAM (Sahakari Bank Kshamta Nirman).
"The mission intends to train over 1.4 lakh participants from UCBs," Malhotra added.