What does EBLR stand for in the context of banking in India?

Concept: To speed up transmission of RBI's policy rate changes into actual bank lending rates, RBI mandated (effective 1 October 2019) that banks link new floating-rate loans for individuals and MSMEs to a rate benchmarked outside the bank's own internal calculations, rather than to an internally-computed rate such as the Base Rate or MCLR.

Application: The resulting rate is called the External Benchmark Lending Rate (EBLR). RBI allows banks to choose their external benchmark from:

• the RBI policy repo rate

• the 3-month or 6-month Government of India Treasury Bill yield published by FBIL (Financial Benchmarks India Pvt Ltd)

• any other benchmark market interest rate published by FBIL

Most banks, including SBI, chose the repo rate, so their EBLR is commonly called the Repo Linked Lending Rate (RLLR) — a specific case of EBLR. The bank must reset the rate at least once every three months.

Cross-check: This differs from the systems EBLR replaced for new floating-rate loans to individuals and MSMEs — the Base Rate (2010) and MCLR (2016). Both were still computed from each bank's own internal cost of funds (reviewed at least quarterly for Base Rate, monthly for MCLR), so transmission of RBI's rate changes depended on each bank's own funding-cost movements rather than directly on the policy rate itself. Because EBLR ties the lending rate straight to an external, publicly published benchmark reset at least once every three months, "External Benchmark Lending Rate" is the term that matches RBI's actual usage — distinct from the internally-computed "Base Rate"/"MCLR" systems it replaced for these loan categories.