Mumbai, Aug 27 (IANS): The Reserve Bank of India's Deputy Governors M.K. Jain and M. Rajeshwar Rao held discussions with the MD and CEOs of all 11 Small Finance Banks (SFBs) on Friday.

The discussion was also attended by the RBI's Executive Directors S.C. Murmu, Saurav Sinha, and Rohit Jain, CGMs, Department of Supervision, Ajay Kumar Choudhary and Monisha Chakraborty, said an RBI statement.

Deputy Governors recognised the contribution of the SFBs towards financial inclusion by extending credit and reaching out to the underserved sections of society.

The discussion was carried out across a range of themes such as evolution of the business models of SFBs, enhancing Board oversight and professionalism, further improvements in assurance functions -- compliance, internal control and risk management.

They also talked on the need to build up these banks' IT infrastructure both for enhanced customer experience and for cyber security resilience, among others. Further, the stress build-up due to Covid-19 and the mitigation measures for continued resilience of books of SFBs also formed part of the discussion.

Fruitful discussion was held in which the MD and CEOs shared their experiences and ideas on the need to work together so that stated objective is achieved for which differentiated licences were issued.

Challenges and the way forward were also deliberated upon so that SFBs continue to be important players in the Indian financial intermediation space and contribute in the financial inclusion journey of the nation.