Analysis of the role of business correspondents in achieving financial inclusion in india

This paper made an attempt to analyse the role of Business Correspondents in achieving financial inclusion in India based on the secondary data. India has made a significant achievement in financial inclusion from past few years. One of the major reasons for this achievement is Business Correspondent Model or branchless mode of banking. Business Correspondents are retail agents engaged by bank for providing banking services at locations other than a bank branch. They are playing very important role in mobilizing rural saving, deepening the financial inclusion, to bring greater financial stability in banking sector, increase the financial literacy among unbanked people, helpful to implement direct benefit transfer scheme (DBT) and build cashless economy.
In 2010, the share of banking outlets through BC was 34174 (50.48 percent) which is increased to 541129 (90.61 percent) in 2019. They opened 319 million BSBDA accounts till 2019; their ICT based transaction is worth 5884 billion in 2019. The major problems faced by BC model in India are low financial literacy among rural customers, difficult to get reliable and skilled BCs, low income profile of the customers, lack of infrastructure, low remuneration/incentives, Security concerns for handling cash at field level and acceptability of ICT based BC model.