I handle credit and grievances at Securis, which means two very different sides of the same job land on my desk. Most days it’s approvals. Some days it’s the harder conversation — a borrower who has missed a payment, is anxious, and mostly wants to know what happens next and whether someone is about to call their family. So when the Reserve Bank of India put out a new set of rules on loan recovery on 6 August 2026, I read every line. This is the part of lending that touches people at their most stressed, and the RBI just made the rulebook clearer and firmly on the borrower’s side.

Here’s what the new framework says, in plain language, and what it does — and doesn’t — change for someone borrowing a small amount from us.

What the RBI actually did

The change is the Responsible Business Conduct (Fourth Amendment) Directions, 2026, issued on 6 August and coming into effect on 1 January 2027. Instead of the older, scattered circulars on recovery agents and collection practices, there’s now one consolidated framework covering how dues are recovered, how recovery agencies are engaged, and what rights a borrower has through the whole process. This is a consumer-protection design, and a welcome one.

The headline protections are worth knowing by name, because they’re now the baseline every borrower can expect:

  • No disabling your devices. A lender or its agent cannot lock, disable, or remotely tamper with your phone or laptop as a recovery tactic. Your device is yours.
  • Fixed contact hours. Recovery communication — call, message, or visit — is restricted to 08:00 to 19:00. Outside that window, they should not be contacting you.
  • No harassment, full stop. Abusive, threatening, or intimidating language is prohibited. So are anonymous calls, repeated nuisance calls, public humiliation, and any threat aimed at your family, your reputation, or your belongings.
  • The lender owns its agents’ behaviour. If a third-party agency crosses a line, the lending institution is held responsible — the burden sits on the lender to show its agents stayed within the rules, and borrowers can be compensated for losses caused by non-compliant recovery.
  • A real policy behind it. Lenders now have to maintain a documented recovery policy: when recovery starts, how it escalates, and — importantly — how they engage borrowers who are in genuine financial distress rather than simply chasing them.

That last point is the one I care about most, because it formalises what good lending should have been doing anyway: treating a struggling borrower as a person to work with, not a problem to pressure.

Does this cover a Securis loan?

Let me be precise, because accuracy matters here. The 6 August directions are addressed to commercial banks. Securis is an RBI-registered NBFC, so this specific circular isn’t the instrument that governs us. But two things are true and worth saying plainly.

First, NBFCs already operate under RBI fair-practices and recovery-conduct norms — the dignity-of-the-borrower principles aren’t new to our side of the industry, and the direction of regulatory travel is clearly toward one consistent standard across banks and NBFCs. Second, and more simply: the protections above describe how we already work. We don’t disable devices, we don’t call at odd hours, we don’t threaten anyone, and we have a named grievance officer — that’s the GRO part of my role — precisely so a borrower always has a person to reach.

So if you’re reading this wondering whether a small personal loan comes with the risk of aggressive collections down the line: the regulatory floor just got higher for the whole market, and at Securis it was never how we did things.

Considering a small loan and want to borrow from someone who treats repayment like a conversation? Apply for a Securis loan — typical disbursement is 1-2 working days, and you’ll see your exact EMI before you commit to anything.

The practical bit: what to do if you’re struggling to pay

Rules on paper only help if you know how to use them. Here’s the honest guidance I give borrowers.

Talk to us before the due date, not after. This is the single most useful thing you can do. Say you took ₹85,000 over 18 months at 16% — that’s an EMI of about ₹5,340 a month. If a rough month is coming and you already know you’ll be short, a message to the grievance channel before the EMI bounces gives us room to work something out. The new framework explicitly expects lenders to engage borrowers in genuine distress; a good NBFC does that regardless. Hiding from the problem is what turns a missed payment into a spiral.

Know what a legitimate contact looks like. A proper recovery call identifies the person and the institution, happens within 08:00-19:00, and stays civil. If someone calls anonymously, at night, uses threats, or drags your family into it, that’s not recovery — that’s a violation, and you’re entitled to raise it with the lender’s grievance officer and, if unresolved, the RBI Ombudsman.

Keep a record. Note dates, times, and what was said. If conduct ever crosses the line, that record is what makes your complaint actionable.

Where this doesn’t help you — and honest limits

A few things this framework does not do, so nobody reads it wrong:

  • It doesn’t erase the debt. Better conduct during recovery is not a reason to stop repaying. The EMI is still owed, and your credit record still reflects how you handle it. These rules govern how you’re treated, not whether you owe.
  • It doesn’t apply if you never borrow responsibly in the first place. The best protection against a stressful recovery process is a loan sized to what you can actually repay. If an EMI would push your total monthly obligations past roughly half your income, borrow less or wait — that’s the boring advice that prevents most collection problems entirely.
  • It’s a bank circular, effective 2027. If you want the strongest possible guarantees today, borrow from a lender whose everyday practice already matches these standards, and read the grievance-redressal section of any loan agreement before you sign. That section tells you who to call when something goes wrong — and if a lender buries it or can’t name a grievance officer, that’s a signal in itself.

The bigger point is simple. Borrowing a small amount for a laptop, a certification, or a genuine emergency shouldn’t come with the fear that repayment trouble will turn into harassment. The RBI just made that expectation explicit for the market, and that’s good for everyone who borrows.

If you want a second opinion on your specific situation — including how repayment works if money gets tight — WhatsApp us — we’ll be honest about whether Securis fits, and about how we handle the hard months.