The Reserve Bank of India has taken up a massive housekeeping exercise, packing decades of scattered circulars into a neat set of consolidated rulebooks. On November 29, the central bank said it has published 244 consolidated master directions, replacing more than 9,400 old circulars and guidelines that had piled up over the years.
Officials said this move is meant to cut down confusion, reduce repetitive instructions, and make compliance a little less of a maze for banks and financial institutions. The RBI kept stressing that this is not a new set of rules but simply everything arranged properly in one place.
For years, banks and NBFCs have had to keep track of thousands of circulars issued since the 1980s. Some overlapped, some contradicted each other, and many were just outdated.
The RBI’s department of regulation has now merged this entire pool into entity-specific master directions, so each type of institution ends up with a clear handbook instead of hunting through multiple documents.
Officials said the work took about five to six months. About 3,809 circulars were absorbed into the new master directions, while 5,673 circulars were judged outdated and withdrawn. The final number of repealed or merged documents stands at 9,345.
One of the big changes is that each regulated entity will now only refer to rules meant for them.
For instance, commercial banks now have 32 subject-wise master directions instead of hundreds of cross-linked instructions.
Board responsibilities have been moved into single sections, FAQs have been blended into the main text, and illustrations are now placed right within the rules.
RBI officials also said that any new amendments will be added through colour-coded updates, so users can easily track what changed.
RBI has also released a consolidated master direction for digital banking channels. This merges past guidelines on mobile banking, call-based services and digital authorisations into one document.
Officials hinted that some circulars may still appear during consultation stages, but once finalised, most rule changes will show up directly inside these master directions.
The central bank described this as a one-time exercise for now. Whether similar clean-ups will happen again will depend on how effective this round proves.
The overall expectation in policy circles is that this new structure may make day-to-day compliance smoother and help banks and NBFCs find relevant instructions faster — but the real impact will only be clear once institutions start using the new system in full.