Overview
- RBI, which released a draft Friday, proposed a simple asset-size threshold of ₹1 lakh crore to identify top-tier non-bank finance companies and said it will review the bar every five years.
- Tata Sons, the Tata group’s holding firm registered as a core investment company, exceeds the threshold on FY25 assets and would remain in the upper layer under the proposal.
- The draft does not clarify whether core investment companies must list, leaving Tata Sons’ status uncertain after it missed the September 2025 deadline and asked to surrender its CIC registration, a request still pending with the RBI.
- The central bank also proposed ending the carve-out for government-owned NBFCs, a change that could place NABARD, Exim Bank, SIDBI and NaBFID under the same tighter oversight as private peers.
- Switching from a parametric scoring model to an asset-only test removes earlier workarounds, as shown by Tata Sons’ repayment of over ₹20,000 crore of debt, and it could expand or reshuffle the upper-layer list once feedback is reviewed and rules are final.