Building India’s Credit Backbone: The National Financial Information Registry (2023)

Policy Update
Sruti Halder

Background

The National Financial Information Registry (NFIR) was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Union Budget 2023-24 speech as a proposed central repository of financial and ancillary information, intended to facilitate the efficient flow of credit, promote financial inclusion, and foster financial stability.

The rationale traces back to a persistent information-asymmetry problem in Indian credit markets: existing credit bureaus such as TransUnion CIBIL, Equifax, Experian, and CRIF High Mark capture only a borrower’s formal credit history, leaving lenders with limited visibility into a borrower’s broader asset, income, and liability position, a gap that particularly disadvantages first-time borrowers, MSMEs, and informal-sector participants, an estimated 97 percent (International Finance Corporation [IFC], 2018) of whom lack the documentation needed for conventional credit assessment. The idea builds directly on the RBI’s 2018 High-Level Task Force on the Public Credit Registry (PCR), chaired by the late Y. M. Deosthalee, which had recommended a centralised, state-owned database to strengthen the country’s credit culture but was never fully operationalised.

The stated objective is to build “public infrastructure” for credit-related information, functioning less like a conventional regulator and more like a role-based information-exchange utility that verified lending institutions and government agencies could query. Following the Budget announcement, the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) undertook stakeholder consultations through 2023, and in mid-2023 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, headed by Jayant Sinha, recommended that the enabling Bill be finalised after full stakeholder engagement and introduced in Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

By February 2024, DEA Secretary Ajay Seth stated that the draft Bill was “almost ready” and could be introduced in an upcoming session. However, as of the July 2026 Monsoon Session, no NFIR Bill has yet been introduced in either House of Parliament, making this one of the more prolonged gaps between budgetary announcement and legislative enactment among recent financial-sector reforms. Target beneficiaries include retail and MSME borrowers seeking easier access to formal credit, lending institutions seeking richer underwriting data, and financial regulators seeking a consolidated view of systemic risk.

Source: Business Standard, “Bill on NFIR to be finalised after discussions with stakeholders,” 2023; Business Standard, “Bill for NFIR almost ready,” 2024; PARFORE policy brief, 2023.

Internationally, several jurisdictions have already established centralized credit-information systems to reduce information asymmetry and strengthen financial supervision. The European Union operates public credit registries through many of its central banks alongside private credit bureaus, while China’s Credit Reference Center, managed by the People’s Bank of China, serves as one of the world’s largest centralized credit databases, covering individuals and enterprises. India’s proposed NFIR follows the same broad objective of creating a comprehensive, state-backed financial information repository but seeks to integrate a wider range of financial and ancillary data through the country’s expanding digital public infrastructure, potentially placing it among the more comprehensive unified financial-information frameworks once operational. 

Functioning

Because the enabling legislation remains pending, NFIR itself is not yet operational; what exists today are adjacent digital-public-infrastructure components that the registry is designed to eventually integrate.

These include the RBI’s Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC), which tracks large exposures for supervisory purposes; the Account Aggregator (AA) framework, a consent-based data-sharing architecture licensed by the RBI; and the Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit, whose pilot commenced on August 17, 2023 under the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub, linking Aadhaar e-KYC, land records from five states, satellite data, PAN validation, and Account Aggregator data to speed up appraisal of Kisan Credit Card loans, dairy loans, collateral-free MSME loans, personal loans, and home loans. The flowchart below sets out the envisaged NFIR architecture once operational, i.e. how data would flow from providers through the registry to authorised end users.

Source: Business Standard, “RBI to commence public tech platform pilot for credit on August 17,” 2023 (data-provider linkages, Aadhaar e-KYC, land records, Account Aggregators); EZTax, “NFIR, National Financial Information Registry Explained,” 2024 (role-based access and lender/regulator end-use design); PARFORE, “Explained: What is National Financial Information Registry?,” 2023 (central repository concept and objectives). 

Institutionally, the registry is conceived as an autonomous, state-backed entity operating under RBI oversight, distinct from existing Credit Information Companies regulated under the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005. Account Aggregators would likely serve as the consent-collection and data-transfer layer between the registry and lenders, mirroring the design already used for the Account Aggregator framework. No funding structure, staffing plan, or data-governance framework has been finalized publicly, since these are expected to be specified in the yet-to-be-introduced Bill itself; this is itself a significant functioning constraint, since institutions cannot build compliance systems around a law that does not yet exist.

Performance

Because NFIR has no independent legal existence, there is no programme-level dashboard, MIS, or budget-utilisation data to assess directly which is an unusual but important finding in itself, given that over three years have elapsed since the Budget 2023-24 announcement. Performance must therefore be assessed against two proxies: the pace of the legislative process, and the growth of adjacent digital credit infrastructure that NFIR is meant to eventually absorb or complement.

Source: Business Standard, RBI Public Tech Platform pilot announcement, 2023; Business Standard, DEA Secretary briefing, 2024; PARFORE, 2023.

The three-year gap between announcement and legislative introduction stands in contrast to other financial-sector reforms covered in this series, the Insurance Amendment Act took roughly ten months from Budget mention to Presidential assent, while the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS)’s Greenhouse Gases Emission Intensity (GEI) Target Rules (2025)  moved from legal enabling provision to sector notification within about three years of the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act, 2022. NFIR’s slower trajectory suggests either greater complexity in data-governance and privacy design, or lower legislative prioritisation relative to other pending financial Bills.

Impact

Since NFIR has not been enacted, it has produced no measurable impact of its own on credit flow, financial inclusion, or financial stability, the three outcomes the Budget 2023-24 speech explicitly named as its purpose. What can be assessed is the impact of the surrounding digital-credit ecosystem that has continued to develop in NFIR’s absence. The Account Aggregator framework and the Public Tech Platform pilot have expanded the range of alternative data: Aadhaar e-KYC, land records, satellite data, PAN validation, dairy cooperative data, usable for underwriting, particularly for borrowers such as MSMEs and farmers who previously lacked adequate documentation.

Industry commentary continues to describe NFIR as potentially “as revolutionary as Aadhaar” once operational, given its promise of pulling together credit, asset, and liability information under a single verifiable framework, but this potential remains prospective rather than demonstrated. The core policy question, i.e., whether a unified financial registry meaningfully improves credit access and pricing for underserved borrowers relative to the current fragmented bureau-plus-AA architecture, cannot yet be answered with evidence, since the institution the question is about does not yet exist in law.

Emerging Issues

Several concerns have surfaced even at this pre-legislative stage.

• First, and most significantly, the prolonged delay between announcement and introduction, now exceeding three years, raises questions about whether data-privacy safeguards, interoperability with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and institutional design (including NFIR’s relationship with the RBI, existing Credit Information Companies, and Account Aggregators) have proven harder to settle than initially anticipated. 
• Second, credit bureaus have expressed concern about whether a state-backed registry with broader data access could dilute or disrupt their existing regulated role, a tension flagged as far back as the original 2018 PCR proposal. 
• Third, without a passed Bill, there is no public clarity yet on funding structure, data-retention rules, or a borrower’s rights to access and correct their own registry entry, all considerations the earlier PCR task force flagged as essential design requirements. 
• Fourth, the absence of a firm timeline creates uncertainty for banks and fintechs planning long-term data-integration investments around a future registry that may still be reshaped by parliamentary debate.
• Fifth, international experience suggests that unified credit-information systems require particularly robust privacy and governance frameworks to maintain public trust. In the European Union, for instance, credit reporting and data-sharing practices operate within the broader framework of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which emphasizes data minimization, purpose limitation, explicit legal bases for processing, and individuals’ rights to access, rectify, and in certain circumstances challenge the use of their personal data. As NFIR evolves, ensuring comparable safeguards and seamless interoperability with India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 will be critical to balancing richer financial information with the protection of individual privacy and maintaining confidence in the registry. 

Way Forward

• Given the extended pre-legislative period, the most immediate priority is for the Ministry of Finance to table the Bill in Parliament with a published draft that allows for informed public and industry comment, rather than continued informal briefings about a text that remains undisclosed. 
• Learning from the PCR’s own decade-long gestation, the Bill should specify clear governance arrangements including the registry’s relationship with RBI, its data-retention and correction rights for borrowers, and interoperability safeguards with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 to avoid a second cycle of design ambiguity after enactment.
• In the interim, continuing to scale the Account Aggregator framework and the Public Tech Platform for Frictionless Credit beyond its current pilot states would let the government demonstrate incremental gains in credit access for MSMEs and farmers without waiting for the full registry. 
• Finally, periodic public reporting even informal DEA or RBI updates on Bill status, akin to the Parliamentary Standing Committee’s 2023 recommendation would help restore visibility into a reform that has otherwise gone quiet since the February 2024 “almost ready” statement, and would allow policymakers, researchers and industry to track progress against India’s stated ambition of building a genuinely unified credit information backbone.

References 

Ministry of Finance, Government of India. (2023). Union Budget 2023-24 Speech. https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/doc/Budget_Speech.pdf

Business Standard. (2023). Bill on NFIR to be finalised after discussions with stakeholders: Par Panel. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/bill-on-nfir-to-be-finalised-after-discussions-with-stakeholders-par-panel-123072701190_1.html

Business Standard. (2024). Bill for NFIR almost ready; may be introduced in next session: DEA secy. https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/bill-for-nfir-almost-ready-may-be-introduced-in-next-session-dea-secy-124020400354_1.html

Business Standard. (2023). RBI to commence public tech platform pilot for credit on August 17. https://www.business-standard.com/amp/india-news/rbi-to-commence-public-tech-platform-pilot-for-credit-on-august-17-123081400706_1.html

Parliamentarians’ Forum on Economic Policy Issues (PARFORE). (2023). Explained | What is National Financial Information Registry? Bill poised to be introduced in next Parliament session. https://parfore.in/explained-what-is-national-financial-information-registry-bill-poised-to-be-introduced-in-next-parliament-session/

Business Standard. (2023). An idea whose time has come: Will NFIR be a game-changer for India? https://www.business-standard.com/amp/article/finance/an-idea-whose-time-has-come-will-nfir-be-a-game-changer-for-india-123021200586_1.html

Dvara Research. (2025). The RBI’s proposed Public Credit Registry and its implications for the credit reporting system in India. https://dvararesearch.com/the-rbis-proposed-public-credit-registry-and-its-implications-for-the-credit-reporting-system-in-india/

EZTax. (2024). NFIR – National Financial Information Registry Explained. https://eztax.in/nfir-national-financial-information-registry-explained

About the Contributor

Sruti Halder is pursuing an MSc in Economics at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. She is committed to leveraging data-driven research and evidence-based policymaking to promote inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development.

Acknowledgement

The author expresses sincere gratitude to IMPRI (Impact and Policy Research Institute) for providing the opportunity to prepare this policy update article and for fostering a rigorous learning environment that connects research with public policy practice.

Reviewers: Madhuritha D, Paridhi Passi

Publisher: Pallavi Lad

Disclaimer: All views expressed in the article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the organisation.

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