Every RBI Return an Indian Bank Files: The Complete 243-Return Map

How many returns does RBI actually publish, and what does its own list tell you?

RBI's List of All Returns, published at rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_Listofallreturns.aspx , carries 243 rows . Those 243 rows resolve to only 235 distinct return names. Eight names repeat, which matters more than it sounds and is dealt with in section 7. That is the hard count, and it is the only complete public enumeration of the return universe an Indian bank sits inside.

The page ships eight columns: Sr No, Name of the Return, Description, Frequency, Department, Reporting Entity, Circular reference and Format. Four of them are free text with no controlled vocabulary behind them. The Reporting Entity column takes 136 distinct strings across 243 rows. The Frequency column takes 60 distinct strings . The Circular column mixes RBI/2019-20-style circular numbers, Master Directions, bare Act sections, survey names, an imf.org URL and the literal phrase 'e-mail instruction'. Only Sr No and Department behave like keys, and even Department has four rows that break the pattern.

Just as important is what the page does not give you. No due dates, except incidentally on the 26 rows that write an event deadline into the Frequency cell. No penalties. No portal per return. No field-level schema. No validation rules. Rbi.org.in/scripts/ValidationRules.aspx carries a single line pointing to the login-gated CIMS DRM portal at sankalan.rbi.org.in . RBI's Data Definitions page defines 296 terms across six domains but carries no return-wise mapping, no field codes, no frequencies and no due dates. And rbi.org.in/scripts/ReportingFAQ.aspx contains no inline question or answer text at all. It is a download index of six ZIP bundles.

So the List of All Returns is an index , not a compliance calendar. Everything between "here are 243 returns" and "here are the 37 that bind us, on these dates, to these departments" is left to the bank. The rest of this guide is that conversion, done column by column.

Search BS_Listofallreturns.aspx on the Description text and the Reporting Entity string, not the Name, because 243 rows carry only 235 distinct names and eight are repeats ('ALM Return' 5, 'Advances/Investments' 3, 'MIS' 2, 'Natural Calamity Relief Measures' 2). Record Sr No, Description and Reporting Entity together as the return's identity. </>), soThat: (<> You are answering about the specific row the inspector meant, and not about a different return that happens to share its name. The failure mode that turns a five-minute clarification into a disputed observation. </>), }, , , , , ]} conclusion= />

Which RBI department owns each return, and why does that decide your escalation route?

The Department column is the closest thing the list has to a clean key, and it is the single most operationally useful field on the page: it tells you who to call when a return cannot be filed, is rejected, or is queried. Across the 243 rows the split is DoS 105, FED 42, FIDD 18, DSIM 17, DoR 17, FMRD 15, DPSS 8, DCM 5, MPD 5, DEPR 4 and IDMD 3.

Those eleven labels sum to 239, not 243 . Four rows carry non-canonical department strings. Sr No 52, 'Reporting of capital issuances and Equity Capital (Qualified Institutional Placements-QIP, Preferential issue to Promoters, GDR issue)..', is tagged 'DoR DoR'. Sr No 156, 'Proforma for reporting details of profits remitted to Head Office by foreign banks operating in India', is tagged 'DOR/DoS'. Sr No 196, 'Return on Complaints', is tagged 'CEPD'. The only CEPD row on the entire page. Sr No 222, 'FMR-IV', is tagged 'DOS' in capitals. Any group-by on department silently drops all four, and two of them (156 and 222) are returns a bank or NBFC genuinely files.

The concentration is the operational headline. DoS alone owns 105 of 243 returns (43% of the entire universe) so supervisory returns dominate a bank's filing load and a single department relationship carries most of the escalation traffic. FED's 42 are almost all forex and event-driven, and route through the FED Regional Office holding jurisdiction over the registered office rather than through a central desk. DEPR's 4 and IDMD's 3 are the thin tail nobody staffs. And DEPR's Sr No 2, 'Returns from AIFIs', is one of the four rows with a completely blank Circular column.

Which of the 243 returns actually bind my entity class?

This is the filter that matters, and it is the reason the RBI page is unusable as published. The Reporting Entity column is free prose: 136 distinct strings across 243 rows, written by different departments at different times, with no controlled vocabulary anywhere behind them.

Exact-match counts give a deceptively tidy picture. 'All UCBs' appears on 17 rows. 'AD Category - I Banks' on 12. 'AIFIs' on 7. 'Scheduled UCBs', 'FFMCs/non-bank ADs Category-II', 'StCBs, DCCBs' and 'Authorised Dealer Category-I Banks and Standalone Primary Dealers authorised as Authorised Dealer Category-III' on 6 each. '7 Standalone Primary Dealers' on 5.

Now watch the exact match fall apart. An AD Category-I bank actually appears across 36 rows under 14 different spellings of its own name : 'AD Category - I Banks', 'AD Category I Bank', 'AD Category. I - Banks', 'Authorised Dealer Category - I Banks', 'Authorised Dealer Category-I Banks', 'AD Category - I Banks and IFSC Banking Units (IBUs) ', 'AD Category - I Banks and IBUs ', 'AD Category - I Banks & Authorised Banks', 'AD Category. I Bank / AD Category - II/ FFMC', 'Borrower through the designated AD Category-I Bank', 'The person having the obligation to report the guarantee through AD bank', and two ODI strings that end 'The bank has to submit to RBI.' Filtering on the exact string returns 12 of 36. A two-thirds miss.

The same holds for co-operative banks: 43 rows touch a UCB class across 15 distinct strings , of which only 17 read 'All UCBs'. Which forces the rule: entity scoping must be substring-and-synonym matching against your own licence class, tier, asset size and permissions, never a dropdown.

And a subset of strings are conditional. They bind only if the bank holds a permission or crosses a threshold. Sr No 154 CRILC UCBs is addressed to 'UCBs with total assets ₹500 crores and above as on previous financial year', which has to be re-tested every financial year end. Sr No 7 Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) Statistics and Sr No 8 PPI customer grievances bind only PPI issuers. Sr No 9 Mobile Banking Transactions and Sr No 240 Return on Internet Banking bind only banks permitted to provide those channels. None of that is visible from a licence-class filter.

A newly appointed compliance officer at a scheduled primary (urban) co-operative bank (Tier III, total assets of about Rs 780 crore as at the previous financial year end, no mobile-banking or internet-banking permission, not a PPI issuer) is asked by the audit committee for a single defensible answer to 'how many RBI returns do we file, and which one did we not know about?' She has the RBI List of All Returns open and nothing else. </> } result= >

Why does filtering the list by frequency lose returns?

The eight canonical periodicity labels break down as Quarterly 87, Monthly 42, Fortnightly 15, Annual 14, Yearly 8, Weekly 5, Daily 5 and Half-yearly 5. Add them up and you get 181. The list has 243 rows. The remaining 62 rows carry 52 other distinct frequency strings, and they are not the unimportant ones.

Trap one: Annual is not Yearly. RBI treats them as two separate values, and the split follows neither department nor subject. 'Annual' includes FLA - Return (DSIM), Priority Sector Advances. Annual (APSA) (FIDD), Form IX (Sec. 26 of the BR Act, 1949) (DoR) and Form APR (FED). 'Yearly' includes Balance Sheet of SCBs (Sec. 31 of the BR Act, 1949) (DoR), OSS8 (DoS), Form - VIII (DoS) and Form - IX (DoS, as 'Monthly / Yearly'). Filter one and you lose the other.

Trap two: half-yearly fragments into at least ten spellings. 'Half-yearly', 'Half Yearly', 'Half- yearly', 'Half yearly March/Sept', 'Half yearly (March-Sept)', 'Half yearly June/Dec.', 'Half yearly: end-Mar and end-Sep', 'Half Year ended March / September', 'Half-yearly (Format not prescribed)' and 'Half-yearly (as per format annexed to the circular)'. Only five rows carry the plain string.

Trap three: dual-cadence rows belong in two calendars at once. 'Monthly / Yearly', 'Quarterly/ Yearly', 'Fortnightly / Monthly', 'Fortnightly/ Monthly/Quarterly' and 'Quarterly for non-RRBs / Annual for RRBs' each describe two obligations, not one. A calendar that files them on the slower cadence is late every intervening period.

Trap four: 26 rows are not periodic at all. They write an event-driven deadline into the Frequency column: 'Within 30 days from the date of issue' (FC-GPR), 'Within 60 days from the date of transfer or date of remittance whichever is earlier' (FC-TRS), 'within three weeks from the date of detection of fraud' (FMR-1 in CIMS), 'Within one month of such action' (reporting of action initiated by the Directorate of Enforcement or DRI). These carry the only stated due dates anywhere on the page, and they belong in a trigger register rather than a calendar.

The five true Daily returns are LEC-FII and LEC-NRI (Sr No 29, FED), Foreign Exchange Turnover (FTD) (Sr No 97, FMRD), Gaps, Position, and Cash Balances (GPB) (Sr No 98, FMRD), Liberalised Remittance Scheme (Sr No 151, FED) and Currency Chest Transactions (Sr No 221, DCM). There is a sixth daily obligation that a Daily filter never returns: Sr No 172, MCLR (Marginal Cost of funds based Lending Rate) Return (MPD07), is labelled 'Daily (On every review date of MCLR)'. The five Weekly returns are FII Weekly (Sr No 26, FED), FCY-Rupee Option Transactions (Sr No 100, FMRD), Equity Investment in Capital Market (JPC data) (Sr No 132, DoS), Return on Defaulted Borrowers (RDB) (Sr No 144, DoS) and DNBS09- CRILC RDB (Sr No 188, DoS).

Which returns does RBI mandate without a circular you can cite?

236 of the 243 rows carry a real circular or Master Direction reference. Seven do not. And it is worth being precise about what 'do not' means here, because the four grades are different problems with different fixes.

Grade 1. The column is literally empty on four rows: 'Returns from AIFIs' (Sr No 2, Fortnightly, DEPR, entity 'SIDBI, NABARD, NHB, EXIM BANK, NABFID'); 'Form II (Unsecured loans and advances)' (Sr No 66, Monthly, DoR, 'StCBs, DCCBs'); 'FMR 1' (Sr No 207, DoS, 'All Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks'); and 'FMR 3' (Sr No 208, DoS, same entity).

Grade 2. A placeholder. 'Copy of Annual Report with audited Statements of accounts' (Sr No 59, DoR, Local Area Banks, frequency '30 June yearly') shows only an underscore.

Grade 3. A named document that is not a circular and carries no number or date: 'IBS return' (Sr No 12, Quarterly, DSIM, 'Banks which are engaged in international transactions') cites only 'IBS Guidelines'.

Grade 4. The mandate is an email. 'Additional Data on Loan portfolio, Branch Profile and Financial Inclusion (LBFI)' (Sr No 146, Quarterly, DoS, All SFBs) cites 'Mail to SFBs'. Section 6 deals with this category in full, because eight more rows sit in it.

The warning widens beyond those seven. Even inside the 236, the Circular column frequently points at something you cannot serve to an auditor as a legal basis: 'As per section 27 of BR Act, 1949' (Form X), 'As per BR Act, 1949' (Form - IX, Form - VIII and Form - II for UCBs), 'Handbook of Instructions on Basic Statistical Return (BSR)-1', 'BSR2_Instructions 2026', an imf.org URL for the PIP survey, and 'Communicated to the reporting entities individually along with the guidance note' for the Return on financial conglomerates. A statute section tells you the power exists; it does not tell you the format, the cadence or the channel.

The operational consequence is the same in every one of these cases: the bank's own filing evidence is the entire audit trail. The covering email, the submission acknowledgement, the internal SOP naming the owner and the cadence. Retention on those rows has to be tighter than on circular-backed returns, not looser. There is nothing external to fall back on.

Which returns rest on nothing more than an email from RBI?

Nine rows in the list cite an email as their mandate, and they cluster in two places.

Four are written as instructions to a class. 'WLA Statistics' (Sr No 6, Monthly, DPSS, WLA Operator) cites 'e-mail instruction'. 'FII Weekly' (Sr No 26, Weekly, FED, AD Category - I Banks) cites 'Email instructions to identified banks'. Note 'identified', which means the entity string on the page is broader than the actual cohort. 'Return on Complaints' (Sr No 196, Quarterly & Annual, CEPD, All Commercial Banks) cites 'Email Intimaton to Banks', RBI's own typo intact. And 'MSME working capital and investment credit' (Sr No 226, Quarterly, FIDD, Public Sector Banks and Private Sector Banks including Small Finance Banks) cites 'email intimation'.

The other five are addressed to a named cohort, and these are the ones a newly licensed Payments Bank or Small Finance Bank most often does not know exist. 'Return on Assets, Liabilities and Exposure-PBs' (Sr No 105, Monthly, DoS) and 'Return on Operating Results (ROR) - PBs' (Sr No 109, Quarterly, DoS) both cite 'Mail to Payment Banks'. So do 'Return on Investment Portfolio (RIP)' (Sr No 145, Quarterly, DoS) and 'Return on Complaints (RoComp)' (Sr No 149, Quarterly, DoS, All SFBs and PBs). 'Additional Data on Loan portfolio, Branch Profile and Financial Inclusion (LBFI)' (Sr No 146, Quarterly, DoS, All SFBs) cites 'Mail to SFBs'.

The structural point is blunt: a bank that scopes its obligations from circulars alone will miss all nine , because none of them was ever circularised. The obligation lives in a mailbox. And if the recipient left the bank, the obligation left with them. The control is equally blunt: a shared regulatory mailbox rather than an individual's inbox, and a register row created for every RBI email that creates or changes a return.

There is one near-miss worth flagging alongside these. 'Liberalised Remittance Scheme' (Sr No 151, Daily, FED, AD Category - I Banks) cites 'Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) for Resident Individuals- Discontinuation of Reporting of monthly return'. A circular whose title announces the discontinuation of a return, on a row that sets a daily obligation. Anyone reading the citation alone, without the Frequency cell next to it, would reasonably conclude the reporting had stopped.

Why do five rows share the name 'ALM Return' and ten rows carry an FMR label?

243 rows carry only 235 distinct names. 'ALM Return' appears five times, 'Advances/Investments' three times, 'MIS' twice and 'Natural Calamity Relief Measures' twice. None of these are duplicates. They are different returns whose identity lives in the Description column, not the Name column.

The five ALM rows illustrate it exactly. ALM3: Statement of Structural Liquidity (SL) is Fortnightly for Scheduled UCBs (Sr No 83) and Quarterly for Non-Scheduled UCBs (Sr No 84). ALM1: Statement of Interest Rate Sensitivity (IRS) is Monthly for Scheduled UCBs (Sr No 85) and Quarterly for Non. Scheduled UCBs (Sr No 86). ALM2: Statement of Short Term Dynamic Liquidity (STDL) is Fortnightly for Scheduled UCBs (Sr No 87). Note in passing that the same class is spelled 'Non-Scheduled UCBs' on row 84 and 'Non. Scheduled UCBs' on row 86.

The fraud family is the harder case: ten rows, five naming conventions, four entity classes. 'FMR-1 (Fraud Monitoring Return (FMR) - SCBs in CIMS)' (Sr No 135, within three weeks of detection, All CBs and AIFIs); 'FMR. 3 (Fraud Update Application (FUA) - SCBs in CIMS)' (136, Quarterly); 'FMR-4 (Return on Bank Robbery, Theft, etc. (RBR) in CIMS)' (137, Quarterly); 'FMR 4' (147, Quarterly, All Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks); 'Fraud Monitoring Return 1 (FMR1)' and 'Fraud Monitoring Return 3 (FMR3) - Fraud Update Application' (194 and 195, As and when, NBFCs. Deposit Taking & NDSIs); 'FMR 1' and 'FMR 3' (207 and 208, UCBs, no circular); 'FMR-IV' (222, Quarterly, NBFCs, department tagged 'DOS'); and 'Red Flagged Account/Fraud Borrowers Return (RFA/Fraud)' (118, As and when basis, AIFIs and All CBs excluding PBs).

'Return on Complaints' is the other one to watch: it exists twice, under two departments and two entity strings. Sr No 149 (DoS, All SFBs and PBs, Quarterly) and Sr No 196 (CEPD, All Commercial Banks, Quarterly & Annual). A commercial bank and an SFB that both say they file 'the complaints return' are filing different returns to different departments.

Which gives the identity rule for the whole exercise: a return's primary key is Sr No plus Description plus Reporting Entity, never the name. Any internal register keyed on name alone will merge or drop returns, and the ones it merges are disproportionately the fortnightly and event-driven ones. The returns where a missed filing shows up fastest.

Return-universe scoping checklist for a bank compliance team

This is the conversion in the order the work is actually done: from a 243-row published page to a bank-specific register that can answer an inspection question without re-reading the source.

The eleven steps

• Write down every label your bank answers to. Licence class, scheduled or non-scheduled, tier, AD category, asset-size band, and every permission you hold (mobile banking, internet banking, PPI issuance, currency chest, IBU). Each is a separate entity string in the list.
• Substring-match, never exact-match , against all 136 entity strings. Log both the hits and the near-misses you rejected, with the reason for each rejection.
• Re-run every frequency filter twice (once for Annual and once for Yearly) and treat all ten half-yearly spellings as a single bucket.
• Split dual-cadence rows into two calendar entries so a 'Monthly / Yearly' row is not filed once a year.
• Extract the 26 event-driven rows into a trigger register , not a calendar. These are the only rows carrying a stated deadline.
• Resolve the circular column to a document number and date for every return in scope. Where it resolves to blank, '_', an Act section, a handbook or an email, mark the row 'no citable mandate' and attach your own filing evidence instead.
• Search the regulatory mailbox for the nine email-mandated returns before concluding they do not apply.
• Key the register on Sr No plus Description plus Reporting Entity and check explicitly for the eight repeated names.
• Record the department for each row , including the four non-canonical tags, because that is the escalation path.
• Source due dates, penalties, portals and validation rules elsewhere. None of them appear on the RBI list. They come from the return's own circular or from CIMS DRM at sankalan.rbi.org.in, which is login-gated.
• Re-baseline on a fixed cycle , diffing on Sr No, since RBI amends BS_Listofallreturns.aspx in place without a change log.

Update history

• 2026-08-14 First published.