The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has published the revised Financial Inclusion Index (FI-Index) for March 2025, showing ongoing improvement in financial services coverage across the nation. The index increased to 67.0, from 64.2 in March 2024, indicating sustained growth in financial outreach.
The FI-Index, which was launched in August 2021 for FY 2021, captures the depth of financial inclusion by assessing three fundamental dimensions: access, usage, and quality of financial services.
The RBI reports that all three facets registered advances during the year, with the most pronounced advancements being in the usage of financial services and quality of service delivery.
The central bank credited such encouraging trends to a more inclusive financial environment and the increasing role of financial literacy initiatives being implemented across the country through collaborations with the government and stakeholders.
In a related report, the government told Parliament on Monday (July 21) that cases of fraud related to banks have decreased sharply this year.
Figures from the RBI show that reported cases of fraud put across by commercial banks and financial institutions fell to around 1.25 lakh in FY 2024–25, a precipitous fall from around 3.22 lakh in FY 2023–24. This represents a year-on-year drop of over 61%.
The government also spoke about recent issues regarding an increase in banking frauds, explaining that there has not been an eightfold increase in the first half of the ongoing financial year as claimed by some media reports.
Additionally, data concerning losses in digital transactions, cybercrimes, and app-based lending platforms-related scams was also put forth in Parliament. The Ministry presented a detailed five-year dataset for the following details bank-wise and State-wise along with Odisha statistics. These statistics are provided in annexures to the Lok Sabha response.
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