Collections and recovery conduct
Lenders may ask for their money. They and their agents may not intimidate, humiliate, or call at all hours, and your family and contacts are protected too.
Verified context. Sources last checked
Owing money does not remove anyone’s right to be treated decently. RBI holds the lender responsible for how its recovery agents behave.
What the rules say
- No intimidation or harassment. Lenders must ensure that they and their agents “do not resort to intimidation or harassment of any kind, either verbal or physical, against any person in their debt collection efforts”.
- Other people are protected. This includes “acts intended to humiliate publicly or intrude upon the privacy of the debtors’ family members, referees and friends”.
- Calling hours. The prohibited conduct includes “persistently calling the borrower and / or calling the borrower before 8:00 a.m. and after 7:00 p.m. for recovery of overdue loans”.
- Messages and anonymous calls. Also named: “sending inappropriate messages either on mobile or through social media, making threatening and / or anonymous calls”.
- There must be somewhere to complain. Banks must have “a mechanism whereby the borrowers’ grievances with regard to the recovery process can be addressed.”
Microfinance has tighter hours
The rules above do not apply to microfinance loans, which have their own. There, the prohibited conduct includes “Persistently calling the borrower and/ or calling the borrower before 9:00 a.m. and after 6:00 p.m.” See microfinance loans.
Contact lists
Separately, the digital lending rules tell lending apps to “desist from accessing mobile phone resources like file and media, contact list, call logs, telephony functions, etc.” A regulated lender’s app should not have your contacts to call in the first place. See instant-loan apps.
If it happens to you
Keep a record: dates, times, numbers, screenshots. Complain in writing to the lender’s grievance officer first. If there is no satisfactory reply in 30 days, the next step is the RBI Ombudsman. Threats and violence are also matters for the police; that is outside what this page covers.
What we could not confirm
- The sentence on hours is about calls. We did not find wording that sets the same hours for visits, so we do not claim it.
- We found no stated penalty amounts for lenders who break these rules.
- These rules bind regulated lenders. An unregistered lender is not following them by definition, and the remedy there is different.
Sources
- Reserve Bank of India (Commercial Banks – Responsible Business Conduct) Directions, 2025. Reserve Bank of India, 28 November 2025, updated 1 October 2026. Chapter VIII, Section K, Recovery Agents engaged by Banks.
- Reserve Bank of India (Non-Banking Financial Companies – Responsible Business Conduct) Directions, 2025. Reserve Bank of India, 28 November 2025, updated 1 July 2026. Chapter III, Section I, and the microfinance conduct section.
- Outsourcing of Financial Services - Responsibilities of regulated entities employing Recovery Agents, RBI/2022-23/108. Reserve Bank of India, 12 August 2022. The original circular, since carried into the Directions above.
Quotations are from these documents as retrieved on 10 November 2026. Paragraph numbers shift when RBI updates a Direction, so we cite sections by name. This page is general information, not legal advice. For your own loan, the agreement and the lender's written reply are what count.