ULI to make digital loans faster, safer, and more accessible for Indians, says Reserve Bank Innovation Hub’s Sahil Kini

The Reserve Bank of India’s Unified Lending Interface (ULI) is set to transform the way Indians access credit, making digital loans faster, safer, and more widely available, according to Sahil Kini, CEO of the RBI Innovation Hub.

“The concept is to build a universal API gateway where every single data point required by a regulated entity—specifically a lender—to open an end-to-end digital loan journey is made available on a single platform,” Kini told CNBC-TV18 in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of Global Fintech Festival.

The platform is designed to simplify lending by aggregating data from multiple sources, including KYC information, assets, transactions, and government databases. This includes land records, vehicle registrations, income tax data, and dairy cooperative records, enabling lenders to assess creditworthiness more accurately and securely. “Several lenders of all types and sizes integrate with these APIs, making it easier for them because, instead of managing multiple vendors, they just come to ULI,” Kini said.

ULI has already seen strong adoption, with close to 60 banks and NBFCs integrated into the platform, and over 100 data service providers contributing to its ecosystem. Kini said the RBI Innovation Hub is working to scale further, ensuring that every cooperative and regional rural bank can offer end-to-end digital credit journeys.

The RBI Innovation Hub, a wholly owned subsidiary of the central bank, has a threefold mandate: conducting applied research for India’s future needs, building and scaling digital public infrastructure, and engaging with fintechs, startups, and academia to bring innovative solutions into the regulated financial ecosystem.

“Building digital public infrastructure is not a trivial exercise. A lot of our focus currently is on building and scaling all of this and driving adoption. As I said, there are frontier areas where we are conducting research. But it is not yet at a phase where I can say this is something fully ready,” Kini added.

With ULI, Kini hopes to make credit more accessible to millions of Indians, reducing friction for legitimate borrowers while ensuring robust fraud detection and security measures. The platform is being positioned as a game-changer in India’s digital lending ecosystem, much like UPI has been for payments.

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