Nirmala Sitharaman chaired the 27th Meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) here today, for the first time after the announcement of the Budget 2023-24.
During the meeting of the Council, it was discussed that the policy and legislative reform measures required to further develop the financial sector may be formulated and implemented expeditiously to not only increase the financial access of the people, but also increase their overall economic well-being.
Union Finance Minister Smt. Sitharaman advised that:
- Regulators should maintain a constant vigil as ensuring ‘financial sector stability is a shared responsibility’ of the regulators. Regulators must take appropriate and timely action to mitigate any vulnerability and strengthen financial stability.
- Regulators should adopt a focused approach to reduce the compliance burden further and ensure a streamlined and efficient regulatory environment. The progress achieved in this regard shall be reviewed by the Union Finance Minister with each regulator in June 2023.
- The regulators need to be proactive and ensure cyber-security preparedness of the information technology systems to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks, protect sensitive financial data, and maintain overall system integrity, thus safeguarding the stability and resilience of the Indian financial ecosystem.
- Regulators should conduct a special drive to facilitate the settlement of unclaimed deposits and claims in the financial sector across all segments, such as banking deposits, shares and dividends, mutual funds, insurance, etc.
- Action Taken Report on Budget announcements made since 2019 was discussed. A focused approach should be adopted by the regulators to implement the announcements made in the Budget 2023-24, for which timelines were also decided.
