RBI Imposes ₹7 Lakh Penalty on 3 Cooperative Banks and Glowmore Finance
Moneylife Digital Team 21 November 2025
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has imposed a total penalty of ₹7 lakh on three cooperative banks and a non-banking financial company (NBFC) for non-compliance with regulatory directions. The highest penalty of ₹4 lakh, has been levied on Glowmore Finance Pvt Ltd, an Odisha-based NBFC.
 
The other banks penalised by RBI are Nawada Central Cooperative Bank Ltd from Bihar, Basaveshwar Sahakari Bank Niyamitha from Karnataka and Big Kancheepuram Cooperative Town Bank Ltd from Tamil Nadu.
 
Glowmore Finance has been penalised for non-compliance with certain provisions of the master direction on NBFC scale-based regulation issued by the central bank.
 
RBI's statutory inspection revealed that Glowmore Finance had failed to obtain prior written permission of the RBI for effecting a change in management, resulting in a change of more than 30% of its directors, excluding independent directors.
 
Nawada Central Cooperative Bank has been fined ₹1.50 lakh for violating Section 26A of the Banking Regulation Act (BR Act) 1949, and for failing to comply with RBI directions on membership of credit information companies (CIC) by cooperative banks. RBI found that the lender had not transferred eligible unclaimed amounts to the depositor education and awareness fund (DEA Fund) within the prescribed time and had also failed to submit the credit information of its customers to all four CICs.
 
Karnataka-based Basaveshwar Sahakari Bank has been penalised ₹1 lakh for failing to comply with RBI’s directions on income recognition, asset classification, provisioning and related matters for UCBs, as well as the RBI’s 2016 directions on interest rates for cooperative bank deposits. RBI found that the lender did not classify certain loan accounts as non-performing assets in accordance with the prescribed norms and had also opened savings deposit accounts in the names of entities that were not eligible to hold them.
 
RBI conducted a statutory inspection of Big Kancheepuram Cooperative Town Bank and found that the lender had failed to upload the know-your-customer (KYC) records of customers onto central KYC records registry (CKYCR) within the prescribed timeline.
 
As a result, RBI imposed a penalty of ₹50,000 on Big Kancheepuram Cooperative Town Bank.
 
RBI says its action against these three cooperative banks and the NBFC is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce on the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the banks with their customers.
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