Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah calls on India’s urban cooperative banks to accelerate technology adoption, enhance transparency, and improve customer service to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.
Amit Shah has urged India’s urban cooperative banks to speed up technology adoption, improve transparency and lift the quality of customer service as the sector faces rising competition from larger banks and digital lenders. Speaking in Mumbai at the inauguration of the new office of the National Urban Cooperative Finance and Development Corporation Limited, the Union home and cooperation minister said modern systems, stronger governance and better training would be essential if the banks were to stay relevant. According to PTI, he also called on all urban cooperative banks to join the umbrella body within the next year.
Shah said about 690 of the country’s roughly 1,400 urban cooperative banks have already signed up to NUCFDC, a figure that suggests a little under half the sector is now inside the new framework. The corporation was set up to help banks pool resources and access shared technology, capital and liquidity support, training and treasury services. The Reserve Bank of India registered NUCFDC in February 2024 and has since moved to widen participation across the sector.
The minister’s remarks build on a broader push to modernise a banking segment that has often struggled with ageing systems, limited scale and uneven governance. When NUCFDC was launched, reports from The Economic Times and Moneycontrol said Shah had described upgrades such as ATM access, debit and credit cards, clearing systems and refinancing as central to the sector’s future. Later, at Co-Op Kumbh 2025, The Indian Express reported that he unveiled digital applications for payments and lending and cited a sharp fall in non-performing assets in urban cooperative banks over the previous two years.
Shah also pressed for a more constructive relationship between the Reserve Bank of India and urban cooperative banks, saying the two sides needed to close what he described as a perception gap. He argued that depositors’ savings must remain protected, but said cooperative banks themselves had to take greater responsibility for technology, governance and service standards. Framing the issue more broadly, he linked the sector’s renewal to financial inclusion and local enterprise, saying stronger cooperative banks would ultimately help their customers as much as the institutions themselves.
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