Big banks' muted response likely slowing ULI scale-up

Lack of digitised land records and slower adoption by large lenders are creating hurdles in scaling up of Unified Lending Interface (ULI), senior bank officials said.

- AATHIRA VARIER & ANUPREKSHA JAIN

"ULI is picking up. However, even though smaller banks might be on-board with the ULI, large banks have their own lending rails and multiple APIs. They are not as much interested in lending through the ULI platform. The interface definitely helps the smaller banks to lend through the platforms," said a senior-level executive of a private sector bank.

In August 2024, ULI was launched by the then RBI governor Shaktikanta Das aimed at transforming the lending landscape in India. The platform aims to facilitate easy access to authenticated data from various sources through standardised Application Programming Interface (APIs) to which all lenders can connect seamlessly through a 'plug and play' model.