Major Banking Revolution: 26 Regional Rural Banks Amalgamated in One State One RRB

The Department of Financial Services (DFS) has announced the amalgamation of 26 Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) on the principles of “One State One RRB”. This is the fourth phase of RRBs amalgamation.

Watching how Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) became more efficient in past amalgamations, the Ministry of Finance shared a new amalgamation plan in November 2024 to get feedback from those involved. After talking with stakeholders, 26 RRBs across 10 states and 1 union territory have now been merged. The main motive of this move is to improve efficiency and deduction in costs.

Today, 43 RRBs are working in 26 States and 2 union territories. In future amalgamation, there will be 28 RRBs in 26 states and 2 UTs with more than 22000 branches across 700 districts. Most of their work is in rural areas, with about 92% of their branches located in rural or semi-urban regions.

This time, this is the fourth phase of merge. If we talk about its past three phases, in Phase-I (FY 2006 to FY 2010) number of RRBs decreased from 196 to 82, Phase-2 (FY 2013 – FY 2015) number of RRBs decreased from 82 to 56 and Phase-3 (FY 2019 to FY 2021) number of RRBs decreased from 56 to 43.

Refer to the gazette notification for more and related updates