The NRB Unified Directives: A Working Map

What the Directives are

Nepali banking statute is thin. BAFIA 2073 (2017) licenses institutions and sets out a handful of hard rules; the Nepal Rastra Bank Act 2058 (2002) creates the regulator and, at section 79, gives it power to issue binding directions. Almost everything a bank does that a lawyer would call regulated is regulated by those directions.

They are consolidated periodically into a single document called the एकीकृत निर्देशन, the Unified Directives. It is neither a code in the civil-law sense nor a statutory instrument in the Westminster sense. It is a consolidated set of numbered directions, each one addressing a subject, each one amendable by circular at any time, and each one enforceable through NRB’s supervisory and penal powers.

For a foreign counterparty, adviser or investor, the practical consequence is that citing BAFIA on a prudential question is almost always the wrong move. The provision you want is in a numbered directive, and the version you want is the one as amended by the most recent circular.

Which consolidation applies

There is no single Unified Directives document. NRB maintains parallel consolidations for different licence populations, separately numbered and separately amended.

Consolidation	Applies to	Current issue	Issuing circular
Unified Directives 2082 (क, ख, ग)	Commercial banks, development banks, finance companies	16 January 2026	Circular No. 10 (क,ख,ग) 2082/83
Unified Directives 2082 (घ)	Microfinance financial institutions	16 January 2026	Circular No. 6 (घ) 2082/83
Unified Directives 2082 (पूर्वाधार)	Infrastructure development banks	16 January 2026	Circular No. 3 (पूर्वाधार) 2082/83
भुक्तानी प्रणालीसम्बन्धी एकीकृत निर्देशन, २०८२	Payment system operators and payment service providers	2082, amended 24 July 2026	Payment Systems Department series

All three banking consolidations issued on the same day, 16 January 2026, from the Banks and Financial Institutions Regulation Department. The payment systems consolidation is maintained separately by the Payment Systems Department and follows its own numbering; it is covered in Payments Regulation: PSO and PSP Licensing, Wallets and Digital Financial Services.

The consolidation cut-off for the 2082 banking edition is Magh 2082 (mid-January 2026). Circulars issued after that date amend it and are not incorporated in the PDF.

Directive by directive

The numbering has been broadly stable since at least the 2067 (2010) consolidation. That matters, because older commentary, loan documents and internal policies cite directives by number and those citations mostly still land in the right place. Subject headings below reconcile the Nepali contents page of the 2082 edition with NRB’s own English rendering of the 2067 edition. The English is descriptive; the Nepali text governs.

No.	Subject	Notes for readers
1	Capital adequacy and minimum capital	The operative detail is in the separate Capital Adequacy Framework. See Capital Adequacy and Prudential Requirements.
2	Loan classification, provisioning and restructuring	The five-category ladder and provisioning rates. See Asset Classification, Provisioning and Non-Performing Loans.
3	Single obligor and sectoral credit limits	The binding constraint on large domestic financings. See Exposure Limits: Single Obligor, Group and Sector Concentration.
4	Accounting policies and financial statement formats	Includes regulatory reserve appropriations from accrued interest income.
5	Risk management	Board-level risk governance and risk-mitigation requirements.
6	Corporate governance	Board, chief executive, committees, conflicts. See Bank Governance and Fit-and-Proper Requirements.
7	Timeframes and supervisory action on implementation of directions	The link between non-compliance and enforcement.
8	Investment, fixed assets and subsidiary companies	Includes restrictions on self-use of assets transferred from non-banking assets.
9	Statistical returns to NRB	The reporting obligations behind the published statistics.
10	Promoter/founder share registration and transfer; cross-investment limits	Constrains who may hold founder shares and how they move.
11	Consortium and co-financing	Includes the requirement that all participating institutions use the same obligor group name.
12	Credit information and blacklisting	Operates through the Credit Information Bureau. See Business Credit: Appraisal, Collateral, Guarantees and the Credit Information Bureau.
13	Cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio	See Liquidity, Reserves and Funding Requirements.
14	Branch and office opening	The mandatory local-level branch requirement was removed in December 2025.
15	Interest rates, base rate and spread	See How Lending Is Priced and Directed: Base Rate, Spread, Priority and Restricted Sectors.
16	Mobilisation of financial resources	Borrowing, debentures and funding structure.
17	Deprived-sector and priority-sector lending	Directed credit percentages. See Exposure Limits: Single Obligor, Group and Sector Concentration.
18	Merger, acquisition, amalgamation and upgrading	See Licensing, Ownership, Consolidation and Resolution of Nepali Banks.
19	Anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism	Formerly headed “know your customer”. See AML/CFT, Sanctions, Correspondent Banking and the Remittance Industry.
20	Consumer protection and financial literacy	A more recent addition; the 2067 edition used this slot for subsidiary companies.
21	Miscellaneous	Where new subjects land before they get a number of their own.

Schedules and reporting formats follow. Whether those count as a twenty-second directive depends on the rendering, which is why published counts of “21” and “22” both circulate. Neither is wrong enough to argue about. A citation should name the directive number, never the total.

Amendment by circular

The PDF is a snapshot. The rulebook is the PDF plus every circular issued since the cut-off, and NRB issues a great many of them.

Circulars are numbered in a series that restarts each fiscal year, with the class suffix in brackets: परिपत्र नं. १० (क,ख,ग) २०८२/८३ is the tenth circular of fiscal year 2082/83 (2025/26) addressed to classes A, B and C. Class D and infrastructure development banks have their own series running in parallel, which is why Circular No. 10 (क,ख,ग) and Circular No. 6 (घ) can share a date.

By 15 July 2026 the FY 2082/83 (क,ख,ग) series had reached Circular No. 19. Nine circulars in that series were issued between mid-June and mid-July 2026 alone.

An amending circular typically touches several directives at once. Circular No. 08/082/83 of 15 December 2025, issued before the 2082 consolidation and therefore amending the 2081 text, is a representative example. In one instrument it:

• cut the risk weight on trust receipt loans from 120% to 100% and introduced rating-based risk weights for domestic public sector entities (Directive 1);
• required 100% loan loss provision on loans under auction or recovery proceedings, allowed collateral to be recognised as a non-banking asset only after three failed auctions, and changed the treatment of restructuring where only the interest rate is adjusted (Directive 2);
• reset the loan-to-value ratio for personal residential home loans to 70% for all amounts (Directive 3);
• required board approval for foreign travel by the chairman, chief executive or a director (Directive 6);
• set cross-investment caps in other financial institutions with a compliance deadline of Ashadh 2087 (mid-2030), backed by dividend restrictions or mandatory merger (Directive 10);
• and removed the requirement that institutions maintain a branch in all 753 local levels (Directive 14).

That is one circular, in one month. It is the reason a compliance position taken from a consolidated PDF has a shelf life measured in weeks.

Finding the version in force

There is no consolidated-as-amended text published between consolidations. Establishing the current rule takes three steps.

1. Take the operative consolidation PDF for the correct class from the NRB Unified Directives archive.
2. Work forward through the circular archive for the correct department and fiscal year, reading every circular in the relevant class series issued after the consolidation cut-off.
3. Check whether the point is governed by a separate framework document rather than by the Directives at all.

Step three catches people out. A material share of Nepali prudential regulation sits outside the Unified Directives:

• the Capital Adequacy Framework 2015 (Basel III based, for class A and national-level class B) and the 2007/2008 framework (for class C and sub-national class B);
• the NFRS 9 expected credit loss guidelines issued in May 2024, and the 2025 guidance note on interest income recognition that superseded part of them;
• the Prompt Corrective Actions Bylaws 2012;
• the licensing policies, including the Foreign Bank Branch Licensing Policy 2022;
• the Foreign Exchange Management Department circulars, which govern everything cross-border and are a wholly separate stream — see Nepal’s Foreign Exchange Regime: The Indian Rupee Peg, Convertibility and Capital Controls;
• and the qualification bylaw for chief executives and directors.

Directive 1 will tell you that capital adequacy is required. It will not tell you how to compute it.

Consequences for the market

Rules change faster than contracts. A facility agreement written against a directive as it stood at signing can be out of line with the directive by the first anniversary. Nepali loan documentation compensates with broad regulatory-change and mandatory-prepayment language, and borrowers negotiating with a Nepali bank should expect the bank to insist on it.

Delegated power is used as macroeconomic policy. Because the Directives can be amended by circular, NRB uses them to steer credit in ways that in other systems would require legislation or at least a formal consultation. Loan-to-value ratios, margin lending caps, directed-lending percentages and provisioning rates have all been moved as counter-cyclical instruments within a single fiscal year. The Monetary Policy statement published each July signals many of the changes, and the circulars that follow implement them. The Directives are the working surface on which Nepali monetary and credit policy is executed, and the circular archive is the record of that execution.

Sources

1. एकीकृत निर्देशन, २०८२ (Unified Directives 2082) for class क, ख and ग licensed institutions

   Nepal Rastra Bank, Banks and Financial Institutions Regulation Department · Issued 16 January 2026; consolidation cut-off Magh 2082 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: The text of the current consolidation, its contents page, the issuing department, and the statement that it is issued under the authority of section 79 of the Nepal Rastra Bank Act 2058.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

2. परिपत्र नं. १० (क, ख, ग) २०८२/८३ — एकीकृत निर्देशन, २०८२ जारी गरिएको सम्बन्धमा

   Nepal Rastra Bank, Banks and Financial Institutions Regulation Department · 16 January 2026 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: That Circular No. 10 issued the Unified Directives 2082 for classes A, B and C on 16 January 2026, and that Circular No. 6 (घ) and Circular No. 3 (infrastructure) issued the parallel consolidations on the same date.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

3. Circulars archive, FY 2082/83, Banks and Financial Institutions Regulation Department

   Nepal Rastra Bank · Continuously updated; consulted 26 August 2026 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: The circular numbering series for FY 2082/83, that Circular No. 19 (क,ख,ग) was issued on 15 July 2026, and that separate numbering runs for class घ and infrastructure development banks.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

4. Unified Directives Issued by Nepal Rastra Bank to the Licensed Banks and Financial Institutions, 2067 — English version

   Nepal Rastra Bank · Revised to 16 July 2010; effective 17 July 2010 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: NRB's own English subject headings for directives 1 to 21, used here to reconcile the English rendering of the current Nepali contents page.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

5. Flash Alert on Circular No. 08/082/83

   PKF T R Upadhya and Co. · Circular dated 29 Mangsir 2082 (15 December 2025); alert published thereafter · Tier 6 — Professional or news source

   Supports: A worked example of how a single amending circular changes multiple directives at once, including risk weights under Directive 1, provisioning and non-banking assets under Directive 2, loan-to-value under Directive 3, governance under Directive 6, cross-investment caps under Directive 10 and blacklisting under Directive 12.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

6. Payment Systems Department archive, including भुक्तानी प्रणालीसम्बन्धी एकीकृत निर्देशन, २०८२

   Nepal Rastra Bank, Payment Systems Department · Consolidation for 2082; amendment listed 24 July 2026 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: The existence of a separate Payment Systems unified directive for 2082, maintained and amended independently of the banking consolidation.

   Accessed 26 August 2026

7. Unified Directives archive

   Nepal Rastra Bank · Consulted 26 August 2026 · Tier 1 — Primary legal instrument

   Supports: That separate unified directive consolidations are published for microfinance financial institutions and for infrastructure development banks.

   Accessed 26 August 2026