New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) drive for airtight financial reporting is yielding results. The latest Supervisory Data Quality Index (sDQI) for the quarter ended September 2025 shows that Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) have collectively improved their data hygiene, with the overall index climbing to 90.7 from 89.9 in the previous quarter.
The sDQI, a benchmark introduced to assess how well banks adhere to the ‘Master Direction on Filing of Supervisory Returns 2024’, evaluates the reliability of data across critical returns such as Asset Quality (RAQ), Capital Adequacy (RCA), and Liquidity (LR).
The jump in the overall score was largely driven by a significant leap in ‘Timeliness’ and ‘Completeness’.
- Timeliness: Improved from 90.5 in June to 93.5 in September.
- Completeness: Remained robust, though it saw a minor dip from 96.2 to 96.1.
- Accuracy & Consistency: These parameters remained steady, with Accuracy at 86.8 and Consistency at 86.4.
In a notable shift, Public Sector Banks (PSBs) outpaced their private counterparts in the overall rankings. PSBs saw their sDQI score rise from 90.0 in June to 91.1 in September 2025. Private Sector Banks also showed an upward trajectory, moving from 90.0 to 90.6 in the same period.
Foreign Banks and Small Finance Banks (SFBs) followed suit, with SFBs recording a notable score of 91.5, up from 90.7 in June.
The RBI’s scoring system categorizes a score above 90 as ‘Good’, 80-90 as ‘Acceptable’, and anything below 70 as a ‘Major Concern’. According to the distribution data, 46 entities have now entered the ‘Good’ territory (score >90), compared to 37 in the June quarter. Crucially, as of September 2025, not a single bank remains in the ‘Needs Improvement’ (70-80) or ‘Major Concern’ (<70) brackets.
For the regulator, high-quality data is the bedrock of risk-based supervision. The sDQI covers 87 SCBs and monitors key returns including the Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) and Risk-Based Supervision (RBS) returns.
As banks move toward more automated, real-time reporting systems, the focus is expected to shift toward further narrowing the gap in ‘Accuracy’ and ‘Consistency’—the two pillars that currently lag behind ‘Timeliness’ and ‘Completeness’.