Resolve stressed assets on time in your interest, RBI tells banks

Central bank making less intrusive rules: Deputy Governor

07/08/2019 MUMBAI: Reserve Bank of India, Governor, Shaktikanta Das (3rd form Right) along with RBI Deputy Governors (from Right), Mahesh Jain, B.P. Kanungo, N.S. Vishwanathan and Michael Patra, Executive Director arrives at a press conference to announce the RBI's monetary policy at its headquarters in Mumbai on August 7, 2019. Phot. By. Paul Noronha

Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor N.S. Vishwanathan has urged banks for timely resolution of stressed assets in their ‘own interest’.

Mr. Vishwanathan, who spoke at a banking seminar organised by industry body FICCI and the Indian Banks’ Association, said that banks should resolve assets under the new framework that was announced by RBI in June to extract the best value, and emphasised the need for dealing only in ‘genuine’ cases.

“Timely resolution is very important. I’d request you to ensure that the resolutions are done in time, not just for the regulatory requirement, but also because it will result in better valuation going forward,” the deputy governor in charge of banking regulation, said.

“We’ve given a lot of freedom to banks to determine various contours. We are making less intrusive regulations and hope that banks will use this to deal with genuine stress in their balance sheets to address the problem,” he added.

Compensation norms

Mr. Vishwanathan also said the RBI would soon come up with the final guidelines for top management compensation.

“Last year, we had issued draft guidelines on the revised compensation policy, aligning it with global guidelines. We have got excellent comments from the market, bankers and HR practitioners, and we will soon come out with final guidelines on the revised compensation policy,” he said.