almost every village within a 5 km radius in 25 states and 7 uts covering 99. 94 % of identified villages. but we cannot remain content with this, and efforts are continuing to achieve universal access to financial services and products. at the same time the policy focus is being repositioned from ‘ access of financial services ’ alone to ‘ usage ’ and ‘ quality ’ of financial services as well. the fi - index constructed by rbi, which is an indicator of our efforts in this direction, is based on the above three dimensions viz., ‘ access ’, ‘ usage ’ and ‘ quality ’. the weights of the index are forward - looking with higher weights given to the deepening aspect of financial inclusion ( ‘ usage ’ and ‘ quality ’ ). responsible and sustained financial inclusion requires balancing opportunity and innovation on both the supply and demand side. on the supply side, it includes steps to provide affordable and easy access to savings account and suite of appropriate financial products & services. on the demand side, it seeks to improve financial literacy and awareness which helps in increasing demand for financial products and services. these demand side and supply side measures should ideally complement each other. in emerging market economies like india, there is generally a disequilibrium amongst the demand and supply side factors. while the traditional brick and mortar structures have helped in taking basic banking services to the nook and corners of our country, the advent of digital dbie. rbi. org. in https : / / www. rbi. org. in / scripts / atmview. aspx? atmid = 136 rbi annual report 2021 - 22 innovations in the extension of financial services, have the potential to be an enabler for graduating to the next level of financial inclusion where the quality of inclusion takes precedence over just availability of financial services. india as a continental economy with multiple languages and cultures, different and sometimes even difficult terrains, large population and low - income levels need to ensure inclusive growth. the focus is thus not only on opening the bank accounts but also making available a bouquet of financial services transactions, payments, savings, insurance, and ensure easily accessible and affordable credit to the customers. inclusive credit will have to be the bed rock of inclusive financial inclusion. the committee on financial inclusion ( chairman : dr. c. rangarajan, rbi, 2008 ) explicitly included ‘ timely and adequate credit at an affordable cost ’ for vulnerable groups in the definition of the financial inclusion. the committee on medium - term path to financial

, seeking to protect customer ’ s interests and minimising systemic concerns. digital only nbfcs : second, rbi came out with registration guidelines for digital - only nbfcs, as the name suggests, is an nbfc running solely on a digital platform without any brick - and - mortar presence ( except for administrative purpose ). rbi enabled healthy innovation in credit intermediation by permitting the setting up an nbfc over a digital platform in 2018. though not a new category of nbfc, their licensing conditions mandates on them to provide their products only in a digital mode. here too, protection of consumers have been kept paramount and the entities are required to maintain audit trails by putting in place required it infrastructure with adequate safeguards on unauthorised access, alteration and destruction of data, if any. regulatory features such as explicit consent for data sharing, domestic location of servers, maintaining audit trails, information security audit, etc. are progressive and at the same time pre - emptive in nature. digital banking unit : with digital banking emerging as the preferred mode of delivery along with ‘ brick and mortar ’ banking outlets, the concept of digital banking units was announced in the union budget 2022 - 23 and the guidelines for operationalising these units were issued by rbi earlier this year. scheduled commercial banks have been authorised to set up digital banking units which are intended as specialised fixed point business units housing certain minimum digital infrastructure for delivering digital banking products & services as well as servicing existing financial products digitally, in both self - service and assisted mode. it is expected that such units would enable customers to have costeffective, convenient and enhanced digital experience of such products and services in an efficient, paperless, secured, and connected environment with most services being available in self - service mode at any time. creating market infrastructure for inclusive credit india has made significant strides in creating enabling digital infrastructure in financial services space. upi, gstn, treds, jam trinity and account aggregators ( aa ) to cite a few. this strong ensemble of digital infrastructure has stabilised and as it matures, would pave way for expansion of credit in a seamless and timely manner which could be made digitally available in an almost paperless environment. aa ’ s capability to aggregate financial data spread across different financial service providers and to leverage this data to build analytics and insights to help consumers in their financial planning would allow financial service providers to offer customized products to their customers. the aa framework also has