Summary: RBI’s Commercial Banks – Interest Rate on Deposits Second Amendment Directions, 2026 took effect on 1 October 2026. Commercial banks must publish bulk-deposit rates on their websites at 10:00 a.m., with a grace period only until 10:10 a.m. on each business day; follow the disclosed schedule; apply uniform rates across branches and customers for similar deposits accepted on the same date; and may differentiate bulk-deposit pricing by applicable Liquidity Coverage Ratio run-off treatment. This guide converts those rules into operating controls for treasury, ALM, branches, digital channels, compliance and internal audit.
- What Changed for Commercial Banks on 1 October 2026
- The 10:00–10:10 AM Publication Window Is a Daily Control
- A workable morning publication chain
- Uniform Pricing Requires a Defined Similarity Test
- Same-day exception surveillance
- Using LCR Run-Off Treatment Without Creating Arbitrary Rates
- LCR classification must precede pricing
- Data, Technology and Audit Trail for Bulk-Deposit Bookings
- Evidence should survive later rate changes
- Month-End Testing After the First Effective Month
- Suggested first-month assurance sample
- Frequently Asked Questions on the RBI Bulk-Rate Control
- 1. Is 10:10 a.m. the normal publication time?
- 2. Can one branch offer a higher rate to retain an important depositor?
- 3. Does the rule cover only domestic resident deposits?
- 4. May a bank use a rate range instead of a precise matrix?
- 5. What should happen if the website is unavailable at 10:00 a.m.?
- 6. Does LCR differentiation permit customer-by-customer bargaining?
- 7. What is the most important internal-audit evidence?
- Key Takeaways
What Changed for Commercial Banks on 1 October 2026
RBI/2026-27/214, DOR.SOG(SPE).REC.176/13.03.00/2026-27, dated 30 July 2026 amended the Reserve Bank of India (Commercial Banks – Interest Rate on Deposits) Directions, 2025. The operative date is 1 October 2026. The amendment is not merely a disclosure circular. It links the rate shown publicly, the rate configured in systems and the rate actually contracted with a depositor. A bank therefore needs one controlled daily process across treasury, asset-liability management, product governance, website publishing, core banking and branch execution.
| Requirement | Operational meaning | Primary evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Daily bulk-rate disclosure | Publish at 10:00 a.m.; grace only up to 10:10 a.m. on every business day | Time-stamped webpage, approval record and system log |
| Advance schedule discipline | Deposit rates paid must follow the schedule disclosed in advance | Approved rate card mapped to product codes |
| Uniform treatment | Similar deposits of similar amount accepted on the same date cannot receive discriminatory branch or customer pricing | Deal-level comparison and exception report |
| LCR-sensitive differentiation | Bulk rates may differ where the applicable LCR run-off treatment differs | Documented LCR classification and ALCO-approved rate grid |
The 10:00–10:10 AM Publication Window Is a Daily Control
Paragraph 7(3), as substituted, requires interest rates payable on deposits, including bulk deposits, to be strictly aligned with the schedule disclosed in advance on the bank’s website. Bulk-deposit rates must be disclosed at 10:00 a.m., with a grace time of ten minutes and an outer limit of 10:10 a.m., on each business day. The reference to every business day means that a static page carrying an undated rate range is not a strong control response. The bank should be able to prove what rate card was approved, when it became visible, what version was live and which booking transactions relied on it.
A workable morning publication chain
1. Treasury or the authorised pricing desk finalises the bulk-rate matrix with the effective business date and obtains the approval prescribed by internal policy.
2. ALM or liquidity control validates that any LCR-based segmentation uses the correct depositor and funding classification rather than an informal customer label.
3. The digital publishing team uploads the approved matrix and records server time, publication time and version identifier.
4. Core-banking and deal-booking teams confirm that product and tenure codes reproduce the published schedule before any bulk deposit is accepted.
5.Compliance retains a daily snapshot and runs an after-the-fact comparison of accepted deals against the published rate card.
A website outage should not be handled by quietly publishing later. The incident should be recorded, escalated and assessed for transactions booked while the public schedule was unavailable. A bank’s business-continuity procedure should identify who may suspend bookings, which alternate controlled channel is permitted, and how the website record will show the effective time without backdating.
Uniform Pricing Requires a Defined Similarity Test
Substituted paragraph 7(2) requires rates on deposits, including bulk deposits, to be uniform across all branches and all customers, with no discrimination between deposits of similar amount accepted on the same date at any office. The rule does not support a branch negotiating a better price merely because the depositor is commercially important. The control challenge is to define the factors that make two deposits comparable and to prevent relationship descriptions from becoming undocumented overrides.
At minimum, the comparison logic should capture booking date, deposit amount or approved slab, tenure, callable or non-callable character, depositor category where legally relevant, currency and residence status, interest payout option, product code and applicable LCR run-off classification. Two transactions should not be treated as dissimilar merely because one came through a branch and another through a central treasury desk. Conversely, a genuinely different liquidity classification should be evidenced before a differential rate is used.
Same-day exception surveillance
A daily exception report should identify deposits within the same approved amount band and product conditions that received different contracted rates. Each difference should be resolved either as a system error requiring correction or as a documented distinction permitted by the rate schedule. Free-text reasons such as strategic client, market competition or management approval are not a substitute for a published, rule-consistent category.
Using LCR Run-Off Treatment Without Creating Arbitrary Rates
The amendment inserts paragraph 10(4) for domestic rupee deposits and paragraph 27(3)(iv) for rupee deposits of non-residents. A bank may offer differential bulk-deposit rates by considering the differential run-off rate applicable to deposits or unsecured wholesale funding under the Reserve Bank of India (Commercial Banks – Asset Liability Management) Directions, 2025. This freedom is bounded: the LCR treatment must be real, consistently determined and reflected in the disclosed rate architecture.
LCR classification must precede pricing
The pricing desk should not choose a rate first and search later for a liquidity label that supports it. Customer master data, counterparty type, operational relationship, maturity, withdrawal features and other attributes relevant under the ALM Directions should drive the run-off classification. The resulting category can then point to an approved price. Where facts are incomplete, the deal should move to a defined review queue rather than be booked on an assumed favourable classification.
| Control question | Owner | Failure signal |
|---|---|---|
| Was the LCR category determined from documented facts? | Liquidity risk / ALM | Manual pricing precedes classification |
| Does the public rate card distinguish the permitted categories? | Treasury and compliance | Internal grid has categories not shown publicly |
| Does the booking system prevent unauthorised overrides? | Operations / technology | Branch can edit rate without workflow |
| Are domestic and non-resident rupee deposits mapped separately where required? | Product and tax operations | Residence status is missing or stale |
| Can audit reproduce the rate applicable at booking time? | Records management | Website history or approval trail is unavailable |
Data, Technology and Audit Trail for Bulk-Deposit Bookings
The strongest implementation is a single source of truth that publishes the website rate card and feeds the booking engine from the same approved data object. If separate manual entry remains, reconciliation should compare every field before the first booking and again after publication. The system record should retain the published version, booking timestamp, branch or channel, amount, tenor, customer classification, LCR segment, contracted rate, approver and any exception identifier.
Evidence should survive later rate changes
A current webpage cannot prove yesterday’s rate. Daily snapshots, cryptographic or system hashes where available, deployment logs and immutable approval records allow the bank to reproduce the schedule that governed a historical transaction. Retention should follow the bank’s regulatory record policy and support internal audit, supervisory inspection, complaint handling and customer dispute resolution.
Month-End Testing After the First Effective Month
October 2026 is the first full operating month under the amended framework. A month-end review should test all business days from 1 October, not a single sample chosen after the event. Compliance should reconcile publication timestamps, rate-card versions and accepted bulk deposits; confirm that no branch or channel used a stale rate; review same-day pricing differences; and retest LCR classifications that drove rate differentiation. Any breach should have a root-cause analysis, customer-impact assessment, corrective action, ownership and target date.
Suggested first-month assurance sample
- Every day on which the website publication occurred after 10:00 a.m., including whether it remained within the grace limit.
- All manual rate overrides and all transactions booked during website or core-system incidents.
- The largest same-day deposits in each disclosed slab and every deal priced at the top of a permitted range.
- Deposits whose LCR classification changed between proposal and booking, together with the supporting facts.
- Renewals, rollovers and non-resident rupee deposits, which can be missed if controls focus only on new domestic deposits.
Frequently Asked Questions on the RBI Bulk-Rate Control
1. Is 10:10 a.m. the normal publication time?
No. The prescribed time is 10:00 a.m.; ten minutes is a grace period, and 10:10 a.m. is the latest permissible time. Operational dashboards should therefore treat 10:00 a.m. as the target and record any use of the grace period.
2. Can one branch offer a higher rate to retain an important depositor?
Not merely on that ground. Rates must be uniform across branches and customers for comparable deposits of similar amount accepted on the same date. A different rate needs a valid disclosed category, such as a properly established LCR-related distinction, rather than relationship discretion.
3. Does the rule cover only domestic resident deposits?
The disclosure and uniformity provisions apply to deposits under the commercial-bank directions. The amendment also expressly inserts LCR-based pricing freedom for domestic rupee deposits and for rupee deposits of non-residents, subject to the relevant direction provisions.
4. May a bank use a rate range instead of a precise matrix?
A public presentation must still allow the rate payable on the booked deposit to be traced to the schedule disclosed in advance. An overly broad range that leaves the actual rate to undisclosed negotiation creates a serious uniformity and auditability risk.
5. What should happen if the website is unavailable at 10:00 a.m.?
The bank should invoke its documented incident procedure, preserve evidence, control or pause affected bookings, escalate the breach and assess customer and regulatory consequences. Backdating a later upload would weaken the audit trail.
6. Does LCR differentiation permit customer-by-customer bargaining?
No. It permits differentiation by applicable run-off treatment within the LCR framework. The classification should be facts-based, consistently applied, approved and visible in the rate structure; it is not a general negotiation exception.
7. What is the most important internal-audit evidence?
Audit should be able to connect the approved daily rate card, its timestamped website publication, the booking-system configuration and each contracted deal, including any LCR category and authorised exception. A break in that chain is a control deficiency.
Key Takeaways
- The amendments are effective from 1 October 2026 and require an operating control, not only a policy update.
- Bulk-deposit rates must be published at 10:00 a.m. and no later than 10:10 a.m. on every business day.
- Comparable same-day deposits must receive uniform rates across branches and customers.
- LCR-based differential pricing is permissible only when the run-off classification is genuine, documented and embedded in the disclosed rate grid.
- October month-end assurance should reconcile every daily publication with every bulk deposit booked under the corresponding rate version.
*****
Disclaimer: This article is a general educational discussion of the Reserve Bank of India (Commercial Banks – Interest Rate on Deposits) Second Amendment Directions, 2026 and related operational controls as checked on 27 October 2026. It is not legal, regulatory, treasury, liquidity-risk, accounting, technology, audit or compliance advice for any particular bank, branch, depositor, transaction or system. The precise application of the directions depends on the regulated entity’s category, the complete text of the applicable RBI directions, definitions of deposits and bulk deposits, the approved interest-rate policy, contractual terms, customer and counterparty facts, the relevant Liquidity Coverage Ratio classification, residence status, product features, system configuration and subsequent RBI clarification or amendment. Illustrative controls, fields and tests in this article are not prescribed forms and do not replace a bank’s board-approved policies, ALCO processes, supervisory expectations, legal review or professional judgment. Website availability, business-day calendars, booking cut-offs, non-resident deposit rules, retention periods and incident responses must be validated for the institution concerned. A bank should not infer that an undocumented commercial distinction permits rate discrimination, nor should a depositor treat this guide as an assurance of eligibility or entitlement to any quoted rate. Readers must verify the current RBI instrument and the bank’s actually published schedule for the relevant booking date and time, preserve transaction evidence and obtain qualified advice before taking or auditing action. TaxGuru makes no representation that this article is exhaustive, guarantees no regulatory outcome, and accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss, penalty, customer claim, supervisory finding, system failure, action or omission arising from reliance on this material without independent verification.
Source Links
Reserve Bank of India — Commercial Banks Interest Rate on Deposits Second Amendment Directions, 2026: https://m.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=13656&Mode=0
Reserve Bank of India — Official notifications and current directions portal: https://www.rbi.org.in/
Notification for review: https://taxguru.in/rbi/rbi-amends-commercial-bank-deposit-interest-rate-rules-lcr-framework-october-1-2026.html
