WHY IN THE NEWS?

Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman, launched the fourth edition of the Public Sector Bank (PSB) Reforms Agenda called ‘EASE 4.0’ for the financial year 2021-22.

About:                                                                                                                                      

• It is simplified, tech-enabled and collaborative banking.
• On the occasion, the finance minister launched the annual report for PSB Reforms Agenda EASE 3.0 for the year 2020-21 and also witnessed the awards ceremony to felicitate the best performing banks on EASE 3.0 Banking Reforms Index.

Best performing banks on EASE 3.0

• SBI, Bank of Baroda (BoB), and Union Bank of India (UBI) won the awards for best performing banks on the basis of EASE index.
• Indian Bank won the award for best improvement from baseline performance.
• SBI, BoB, UBI, Punjab National Bank and Canara Bank also won the top awards across different themes of PSB Reforms Agenda EASE 3.0.

Reforms under EASE 4.0

EASE 4.0 reforms look after four key initiatives to be adopted by public sector banks:

1. Smart lending backed by analytics
2. 24×7 banking with resilient technology & cloud-based IT systems
3. data enabled agriculture financing and
4. Collaboration with the financial ecosystem.