Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Rohit Jain cautions that banks’ own technology stacks pose significant systemic threats, urging greater governance and resilience in digital infrastructure amid rapid fintech growth.
Rohit Jain, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, has warned that the biggest threats facing banks are increasingly embedded in their own technology stacks. Speaking at the SBI Banking Conclave, Jain said technology is no longer just a support function but the framework through which banking risk is now created, transmitted and controlled.
His warning was straightforward: a bank can have strong capital, ample liquidity and sound governance, yet still leave customers locked out of their money if a vital system fails. An outage, cyber incident or breakdown in a key digital dependency can interrupt payments, withdrawals and other essential services even when the institution itself remains financially sound. That shift, Jain argued, means technology and financial resilience can no longer be treated as separate disciplines.
Jain said technology risk must be regarded as a first-order enterprise risk rather than a narrow issue for information technology teams. According to his remarks, banks now rely on a web of interconnected systems covering core banking, payments, application programming interfaces, cloud infrastructure, data centres, software vendors and cybersecurity tools. He also cautioned that institutions cannot simply outsource accountability along with those services. Even when banks depend on external providers, they still need to understand access controls, concentration risks, recoverability, data protection and exit options.
The deputy governor also pointed to the wider systemic danger created by common dependencies across the industry. As reported by LiveMint, Business Standard and other Indian media, Jain flagged speed, concentration and opacity as three major concerns as finance becomes more automated. He said machines can move faster than people can react, that a failure at one cloud, software or AI provider can affect many institutions at once, and that banks must not outsource responsibility for decisions made with advanced models. That concern matters in India’s huge digital payments ecosystem: Jain said the Unified Payments Interface processed 24.9 billion transactions worth about Rs 30 lakh crore in August 2026. In that context, he argued, spending on technology should be seen not only as investment in growth, but also as investment in continuity, confidence and financial stability.
Jain said the rise of artificial intelligence brings both opportunity and risk. AI could improve customer service, fraud detection, risk assessment and productivity, but it could also magnify errors in credit decisions, fraud alerts, pricing and customer access unless banks put proper controls in place. He said governance must come before scale, with validation, monitoring, human oversight and clear accountability built into deployment. His broader message to boards and senior executives was that technological literacy is now part of sound banking oversight: the institutions that will fare best are not necessarily those with the most advanced systems, but those able to govern them with discipline and foresight.
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