The Reserve Bank of India moved reporting on natural-calamity relief lending from a monthly to a half-yearly cycle, and widened the set of institutions that must report, by circular RBI/2026-27/250 (CO.FIDD.FSD.No.S544/05-10-001/2026-27) dated 2 September 2026. Regulated entities must now furnish the prescribed information through the Centralised Information Management System portal within 30 days of each half-year — by 30 October for the half-year ending 30 September, and by 30 April for the half-year ending 31 March.
Background
Relief measures in areas affected by natural calamities are a distinct strand of Indian banking regulation. When a district is declared calamity-affected, lenders operating there are expected to restructure existing loans, convert crop loans to term loans, extend fresh consumption and rehabilitation credit, and treat the resulting accounts under a modified asset-classification regime rather than the ordinary one. It is one of the few areas where prudential norms bend to a geographic event.
Because the regime alters asset classification, RBI has historically collected data on its use. The circular records that the framework governing those relief measures was revised by the amendment directions on Resolution of Stressed Assets dated 29 April 2026, which came into effect from 1 July 2026. The enclosure to the 2 September circular names eight instruments in that set — amendment directions for All India Financial Institutions, Non-Banking Financial Companies, Rural Cooperative Banks, Regional Rural Banks, Local Area Banks and Small Finance Banks, and second amendment directions for Urban Cooperative Banks and Commercial Banks.
Those revised directions require the data to come through CIMS on a half-yearly basis. The 2 September circular is the operational consequence: it aligns the reporting mechanism with the framework that already took effect on 1 July 2026.
Key provisions
Half-yearly submission through CIMS. Paragraph 2 requires regulated entities to furnish the required information in the revised reporting format through the CIMS portal, on a half-yearly basis, in order to align the existing reporting mechanism with the revised regulatory framework.
The deadlines. Paragraph 3 provides that the return shall be submitted within 30 days from the end of each half-year — by 30 October for the half-year ending 30 September, and by 30 April for the half-year ending 31 March.
Data quality is an express obligation. Paragraph 4 requires entities to ensure that the information submitted through CIMS is accurate, complete and duly validated, and states that appropriate internal systems and processes may be established to facilitate timely collection, verification, consolidation and submission.
The monthly return is gone. Paragraph 5 provides that the existing monthly return — applicable to all Scheduled Commercial Banks including Small Finance Banks and excluding Regional Rural Banks — on relief measures extended in areas affected by natural calamities stands discontinued with effect from 1 July 2026.
A wider addressee list. The circular is addressed to Chief Executive Officers and Managing Directors of all Scheduled Commercial Banks (including Regional Rural Banks and Small Finance Banks), all Local Area Banks, Urban Cooperative Banks, Rural Cooperative Banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies and All India Financial Institutions.
Reading paragraph 3 together with paragraph 5, the first half-year for which the new return falls due is the half-year ending 30 September 2026, reportable by 30 October 2026. The circular does not say so in terms, and that reading is offered as a reading rather than as an express provision.
Implications for practitioners
The headline looks like deregulation — twelve filings a year become two. The substance is closer to the opposite.
The population of reporters has expanded materially. The discontinued monthly return bound scheduled commercial banks including small finance banks and excluded regional rural banks. The new half-yearly return binds regional rural banks, local area banks, urban and rural cooperative banks, non-banking financial companies and All India Financial Institutions as well. For a rural cooperative bank or a mid-sized NBFC lending in a calamity-prone district, this is not a relaxation of an existing duty; it is the arrival of a new one, and it arrives against a framework that came into effect on 1 July 2026 with a first filing plausibly due by 30 October 2026.
Entities in that newly covered set should be treating this as an implementation project, not a calendar entry. Three things need to exist before the first filing: a CIMS onboarding position that is actually confirmed rather than assumed; a source-of-truth for relief measures extended, at the granularity the revised format requires; and a reconciliation between that source and the loan book, because paragraph 4's requirement that data be "accurate, complete, and duly validated" is drafted as an obligation rather than an aspiration.
Two further points deserve attention. First, a longer reporting period is not a lighter one. Monthly reporting forces a monthly discipline; half-yearly reporting invites six months of accumulation followed by a reconstruction exercise. RBI has pre-empted the obvious failure mode by writing paragraph 4 as it did, and the reference to "appropriate internal systems and processes" for timely collection, verification and consolidation reads as a supervisory expectation about how the data is assembled, not only about what is filed.
Second, the substantive framework is where the real obligations sit. This circular is a reporting instrument; the eight amendment directions of 29 April 2026 listed in its enclosure are the ones that determine which relief measures a regulated entity must or may extend, and how the resulting exposures are classified. Entities that have read the reporting circular but not the applicable amendment directions for their own category have read the smaller half of the change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do non-banking financial companies now have to file this return?
Yes. The circular of 2 September 2026 is addressed to Non-Banking Financial Companies among others, and the revised regulatory framework it implements includes the Reserve Bank of India (Non-Banking Financial Companies — Resolution of Stressed Assets) Amendment Directions, 2026, named in the enclosure to the circular. The discontinued monthly return did not apply to NBFCs.
What format must the data be filed in?
The circular refers to a revised reporting format for submission through the CIMS portal but does not reproduce it, and the format was not available for review when this article was written. Its fields are therefore not described here.
From when was the monthly return discontinued?
From 1 July 2026. Paragraph 5 of the circular states that the existing monthly return applicable to all Scheduled Commercial Banks including Small Finance Banks and excluding Regional Rural Banks stands discontinued with effect from that date — which is also the date the amendment directions of 29 April 2026 came into effect.