National Strategy For Financial Inclusion: RBI Outlines Roadmap For 2025 To 2030

On December 1, 2025, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI): 2025-2030. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra introduced the document after approval by the sub-committee of the Financial Stability and Development Council during its 32nd meeting.

According to the official release, the approach is an ecosystem-based strategy that covers last mile access, service quality, and effective usage of financial products. It has identified five strategic objectives, known as the Panch Jyoti, supported by 47 action points to enable coordinated implementation across institutions.

Panch Jyoti Sets Out Five Key Objectives

The first goal is to enhance access to and usage of equitable, responsible, suitable, and affordable financial services. According to the release, increasing the product bouquet for households and micro enterprises has been marked as a priority under the strategy, including savings, credit, insurance, and pension products.

The second objective is to have a gender-sensitive approach to women-led financial inclusions, identifying differentiated strategies to address financial resilience gaps among underserved and vulnerable segments.

The third objective is to create linkages between financial inclusion and livelihood programmes, skills and supporting ecosystems. Alignment to such initiatives forms part of the broader framework

The fourth objective focuses on the importance of financial education in cultivating financial discipline. It stipulates the use of structured literacy programs for improved understanding and usage of formal financial services.

The fifth objective aims at enhancing customer protection and grievance redressal systems, including reliability and easy accessibility of complaint-handling mechanisms.

Strategy Developed Through Inter Agency Consultations

The strategy was prepared under the technical group on Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy. It followed consultations with the Department of Economic Affairs, Department of Financial Services, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (India), Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC), and the National Centre for Financial Education (NCFE).

As indicated in the plan, the earlier National Strategy for Financial Inclusion, covering a period of 2019-2024, has recorded improvements in access, usage and quality indicators. These included higher account ownership, wider availability of digital payment options and increased use of formal financial channels.

RBI's Previous Measures

In the earlier strategy period, several initiatives were undertaken to enhance formal financial access. These included the Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) which supported deployment of digital acceptance devices in under served regions, and the financial inclusion index that measured progress across multiple parameters.

Other previous measures included strengthening the business correspondent model to improve last mile service delivery, expansion of the account aggregator framework to support data sharing, and enhancement of digital fraud reporting systems. The central bank also worked with other agencies on supporting micro-insurance and micro-pension schemes and encouraged digital onboarding processes with a view to reducing operational barriers.