NABARD GK Questions 2026

Muhammad Yunus built the bank on the idea that very small loans without collateral, given mostly to women organised in groups that guarantee one another, are repaid reliably, and the Nobel Peace Prize of 2006 was awarded jointly to him and to the bank.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development launched the programme as a pilot in 1992, connecting savings groups, mostly of women, directly to bank branches for credit, and by the number of households covered it became the largest microfinance programme in the world.

The cap covers the repayment of all loans of the household taken together, not only the microfinance loan being considered, and the lender must assess household income and existing debt before sanctioning, which is the framework's main protection against over-indebtedness.

The framework defines a microfinance loan by the borrower's household income rather than by the size of the loan or the kind of lender, and the same definition applies to a bank, a small finance bank, an NBFC and an NBFC-MFI alike, which was the main reform the framework brought.

After the microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh in 2010, the Reserve Bank appointed a sub-committee of its central board under Y. H. Malegam to study the lending practices of microfinance institutions, and its report of January 2011 led to the NBFC-MFI being carved out as a distinct category with its…

A non-deposit-taking NBFC of that size is classified as systemically important, written as NBFC-ND-SI, and becomes subject to prudential norms on capital adequacy, exposure and disclosure that smaller companies escape.

The layers are the Base Layer, the Middle Layer, the Upper Layer and the Top Layer, and the regulation becomes stricter as a company moves up, so that supervision matches the risk a company poses to the system.

The Reserve Bank uses what the industry calls the fifty-fifty test: both conditions must hold, so financial assets must be more than half of total assets and the income from those assets must be more than half of gross income.

An NBFC cannot accept demand deposits, cannot issue cheques drawn on itself, is not part of the payment and settlement system, and its depositors do not have the cover of the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation.

The section was inserted by the Reserve Bank of India (Amendment) Act of 1997 and requires an NBFC to hold a certificate of registration from the Reserve Bank and to maintain the prescribed minimum net owned fund before it can carry on business.

The Reserve Bank asked banks in 2005 to offer a no-frills account with nil or very low minimum balance so that poor households would not be kept out by charges, and in 2012 the product was renamed the Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account, with a free debit card and a…

Regional Rural Banks were set up from 1975 on the recommendation of a working group chaired by M. Narasimham, to provide credit to small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and rural artisans, and the Regional Rural Banks Act followed in 1976.

The Aadhaar Enabled Payment System lets a customer withdraw or deposit cash, check a balance or transfer money at a micro ATM held by a business correspondent, identifying himself with the bank name, the Aadhaar number and a biometric such as a fingerprint, so neither a card nor a cheque…

NPCI was incorporated in 2008 as a not-for-profit umbrella organisation for retail payments, promoted by the Reserve Bank of India and the Indian Banks' Association under the framework of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.

The Atal Pension Yojana, launched in 2015 and administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority, admits subscribers between eighteen and forty years of age so that every subscriber contributes for at least twenty years before the pension begins at sixty.

The Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana is a one-year renewable life insurance cover of two lakh rupees on death from any cause, open to holders of a savings bank account between eighteen and fifty years of age, with the premium debited from the account.

The expression describes the three pieces that together make a cash transfer possible: a bank account opened under the Jan Dhan Yojana to receive the money, the Aadhaar number to identify the beneficiary and remove duplicate names, and the mobile phone through which the beneficiary is informed and can transact.

Real Time Gross Settlement is designed for large-value transfers, each settled singly and immediately in the books of the Reserve Bank, and the minimum amount for a customer transaction is two lakh rupees with no upper ceiling.

MUDRA loans to non-farm micro enterprises are graded in three named categories: Shishu for loans up to fifty thousand rupees, Kishore for loans above fifty thousand and up to five lakh, and Tarun for loans above five lakh and up to ten lakh, with a higher slab added later for…

Payments banks were licensed on the recommendation of the Nachiket Mor Committee to widen access to deposits and payments, and the Reserve Bank's guidelines expressly bar them from lending and from issuing credit cards; their funds must go into government securities and deposits with other banks.