Finance Minister launches Ease 4.0 Reforms

The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today launched the EASE 4.0 – Enhanced Access and Service Excellence – a common reforms agenda for Public Sector Banks (PSBs) for the financial year 2021-22.

1. The reforms agenda is aimed at institutionalising clean and smart banking.
2. The first edition of EASE 1.0 was launched in January 2018, while EASE 3.0 was unveiled in February 2020, aimed at enhancing the ease of banking across all customer experiences, employing analytics, technology, and alternate data.
3. The salient features of the norms are:
   1. Data enabled agricultural credit
   2. Collaboration amongst financial ecosystem players
   3. Accelerated push of technology, HR and Governance reforms
4. EASE is part of the reforms agenda designed on the suggestions made at the PSB Manthan held in November 2017, comprising top leadership of the public sector lenders and representatives from the Government.
5. FM Sitharaman, who was on a two-day visit to Mumbai, met the PSBs chiefs and undertook a review of the annual performance of the public sector lenders.
6. This is the finance minister’s first visit since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.