The first was the enactment of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 which brought in a comprehensive and formal structure of bank regulation and supervision in India. The nationalization of banks in our country in 1969 marked the second such point. It generated forces that took banking beyond the elite class to the masses.
It led to the establishment of a very substantial infrastructure across the geographical expanse of the country and was, thus, a critical trigger for financial outreach of institutions and empowerment of the common man. The third inflexion point in banking was the financial sector reforms initiative that was launched in the early 1990s. 15.