At the Global Fintech Fest 2026 in Mumbai, Rohit Jain, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, delivered a keynote address that cut through the ambient enthusiasm surrounding financial technology with a measured, three-part framework for responsible innovation. Speaking on 9 September 2026 at one of Asia's most prominent annual gatherings for the fintech industry, Jain articulated what he described as the essential imperatives governing emerging technologies in finance: purpose, prudence, and policy. The address, subsequently published by the Bank for International Settlements on 16 September 2026, signals the increasingly assertive posture that major emerging-market central banks are adopting toward an industry that has often moved faster than the regulatory frameworks designed to contain it.
A Framework Built on First Principles
The rhetorical structure of Jain's keynote was itself a statement of intent. Rather than cataloguing the capabilities of artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technology, or digital payment rails in isolation, the Deputy Governor chose to anchor the conversation in three normative imperatives — what technology in finance ought to be, not merely what it can do. This philosophical starting point distinguishes the RBI's evolving approach from jurisdictions that have tended to lead with capability assessments or market-growth projections before circling back to questions of accountability and risk.
Purpose, as framed by Jain, demands that financial technology serve the real economy and the populations that depend on it — not simply generate efficiencies or returns for intermediaries. This is a pointed message in a country where financial inclusion remains an unfinished agenda despite remarkable strides through initiatives such as the Unified Payments Interface. When a senior central bank official places purpose at the head of a three-part framework at a global stage, it is a deliberate signal to developers, investors, and platform operators alike: technological sophistication alone cannot justify deployment if the underlying use case fails to deliver meaningful benefit to end users.
Prudence as a Regulatory Lens
The second imperative — prudence — speaks directly to the systemic risk dimension that regulators globally have struggled to price into fast-moving fintech ecosystems. The pace of innovation in areas such as embedded finance, generative artificial intelligence applied to credit underwriting, and real-time cross-border settlement has repeatedly outrun supervisory toolkits. Jain's invocation of prudence at Mumbai's flagship fintech event is a reminder that the RBI views its supervisory mandate not as an obstacle to innovation but as a precondition for its durability. Innovations that lack adequate risk controls, consumer protection safeguards, or operational resilience are not, in the RBI's view, genuine innovations at all — they are liabilities deferred.
This framing has broader resonance beyond India's borders. Across the Asia-Pacific region, from Singapore to the Philippines, regulators are grappling with the same fundamental tension: how to enable the deployment of transformative technology without inadvertently concentrating systemic fragility in new and less visible corners of the financial system. Jain's speech, by reaching a global audience through its subsequent BIS publication, effectively contributes to a growing body of central-bank thinking that treats prudential discipline and technological progress as complementary rather than antagonistic forces.
Policy as the Connective Tissue
The third imperative — policy — may be the most operationally complex of the three. Effective policy frameworks for fintech must simultaneously be adaptive enough to accommodate rapid technological change and robust enough to provide legal certainty to market participants. The failure to achieve both simultaneously has been a defining feature of regulatory approaches in many markets, including some of the most sophisticated financial centres in the world. By positioning policy as an explicit imperative rather than a background condition, Jain is effectively calling for deliberate, anticipatory regulatory design — governance that shapes technology trajectories rather than scrambling to catch up with them.
For the RBI specifically, this imperative arrives at a consequential moment. India's digital financial infrastructure has matured rapidly over the past decade, attracting substantial international attention and serving as a reference model for several developing economies. The country's central bank now finds itself in the dual position of domestic regulator and de facto standard-setter for a cohort of nations looking to replicate India's payments architecture. The policy frameworks Jain advocates domestically therefore carry an outsized international footprint.
What This Means for the Industry
The publication of Jain's address through BIS channels amplifies its significance considerably. The BIS serves as the primary institutional forum through which central banks coordinate regulatory philosophy, and the decision to platform this speech reflects a broader consensus among monetary authorities that fintech governance deserves elevation to the highest tiers of financial policy discussion. For fintech firms, payment processors, and technology vendors operating across emerging markets, the message from Mumbai is unambiguous: the era of regulatory permissiveness — whether explicit or tacit — is giving way to a period defined by accountability to purpose, disciplined risk management, and proactive engagement with the policy process. Those who build their strategies around these three imperatives will be best positioned to operate sustainably in the markets that matter most.
Written by the editorial team — independent journalism powered by Codego Press.