Data quality: PSU banks lag peers in accuracy, timeliness

MUMBAI: Public sector banks lag their peers among private sector and foreign lenders in terms of accuracy, timeliness and consistency of data submitted for the purpose of supervision. However, they outperform in terms of completeness of data.Reserve Bank of India has started publishing the Supervisory Data Quality Index (sDQI) for scheduled commercial banks, with the first release covering the March 2024 and March 2025 quarters. The index, which evaluates the quality of regulatory data submissions based on accuracy, timeliness, completeness and consistency, improved to 89.3 in March 2025 from 88.6 a year earlier.Among bank groups, small finance banks topped the overall sDQI score at 90.6, followed by private sector banks at 89.6. Foreign banks and public sector banks reported overall scores of 89.1 and 88.8 respectively-both within the “acceptable” range of 80-90 as per RBI’s benchmarks. Public sector banks recorded the highest score on data completeness (99.4), but lower marks in accuracy (85.7), timeliness (84.8) and consistency (85.2).The sDQI covers 87 scheduled commercial banks and assesses the quality of returns submitted for supervisory review, including those related to asset quality, liquidity, capital adequacy, and large credit exposures. The RBI said the index is based on principles laid out in the Master Direction on Filing of Supervisory Returns, 2024.Many central banks, such as the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, prepare such Data Quality indices (DQI) based on robust methodologies.