RBI imposes penalty on Citibank, Asirvad Micro Finance, JM Fin Home Loans

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday imposed monetary penalties on Citibank, Asirvad Micro Finance, and JM Financial Home Loans for violating regulatory norms.

 

The central bank fined Citibank Rs 39 lakh for reporting breaches in ‘Large Exposures’ limits with delay and not uploading rectified data in certain segments within seven days of receiving rejection reports from Credit Information Companies (CICs).

 

Meanwhile, Asirvad Micro Finance failed to report the household income of certain borrowers to CICs. It also failed to provide factsheets to certain gold loan customers and did not establish a system of auto-escalation for all complaints that were partly or wholly rejected by its internal grievance redress mechanism to the internal ombudsman for a final decision. These deficiencies led to the RBI imposing a penalty of Rs 6.20 lakh on the company.

 

The action was based on supervisory findings following a statutory inspection of the companies for their financial position as of March 31, 2023.

 

In the case of JM Financial Home Loans, RBI levied a Rs 1.50 lakh penalty based on an assessment by the National Housing Bank of its financial position for March 31, 2022, and March 31, 2023. The company had failed to disclose the approach for the gradation of risk and the rationale for charging different interest rates to different categories of borrowers. It also did not communicate this explicitly in the application forms or sanction letters.