NEW DELHI: A common portal for consortium lending, a shared collections entity, and an integrated bad loan recovery mechanism are among the 30 business and functional areas identified by public sector banks, or PSBs, as part of a government initiative to foster collaboration and drive business impact. The banks will now strategise to execute these initiatives, aiming to enhance cost efficiency, boost revenues, and streamline operations, said people aware of the developments."The government has been pushing lenders to look at internal collaboration, create common utilities, and scale them up to improve their performance and competitiveness. We expect banks to roll out some of these initiatives within this fiscal," said a government official requesting anonymity.A senior bank executive said lenders will soon start to execute these projects, and some of them will be pursued through PSB Alliance Private Limited (PSBA), set up as an intermediary for all the PSBs in 2010 with a mandate to create common applications and platforms."Some other focus areas are a shared collection utility and a common platform for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) planning and reporting," he added.115707271The banks will further pursue these initiatives as part of the Enhanced Access and Service Excellence (EASE) Reforms 7.0 for FY25, which is focused on "Economic Development, Customer Delight, and Resilient Banking."Banks are already collaborating on some other common platforms which include auction platform eBkray, door-step banking and a cloud infrastructure for PSBs.Last month, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) mandated that all insolvency professionals list the details of all unsold assets in respect of the ongoing liquidation processes on the eBKray platform. "It will be a single listing platform to host all assets being sold in liquidation cases," it noted.PSBs have shown strong performance in the first half of FY25, with 11% year-on-year growth in aggregate business and a 25.6% growth in net profit at Rs 85,520 crore.Earlier this month, the finance ministry in a statement noted that the reforms and regular monitoring have addressed many concerns and challenges and resulted in setting up enhanced systems and processes for credit discipline, recognition and resolution of stressed assets, among others.