Most co-operative credit societies run their member reminders the same way they did twenty years ago: a clerk with a register, a mobile phone and a long afternoon. It works until the member count crosses a few thousand, deposits start maturing in clusters, and the same three staff are chasing loan instalments, renewals and KYC updates at once.
Automating member reminders does not mean replacing your staff. It means letting a system handle the hundreds of routine calls and messages that have only one correct outcome, so your people spend their time on the accounts that need judgement. This post covers what to automate first, what a society may and may not do when contacting members, and a first 30 days plan you can actually follow.
First, a point about what your society is and is not
A co-operative credit society registered under a state Co-operative Societies Act is not an RBI-licensed bank. The Reserve Bank of India has said this in plain terms more than once.
In a public caution, RBI noted that certain co-operative societies accepting deposits from non-members, nominal members or associate members are conducting banking business in contravention of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, and that such societies have “neither been issued any licence under B.R. Act, 1949 nor are they authorized by the RBI for doing banking business”. RBI also cautioned that some societies use the word “Bank” in their name in violation of Section 7 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 as applicable to co-operative societies.
RBI added that deposit insurance cover from the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation is not available for deposits placed with these societies, and asked the public to carry out due diligence before dealing with them.
This matters for your messaging. Reminder templates that describe the society as a bank, imply RBI supervision, or suggest deposits are insured are not just marketing shortcuts. They are the exact claims RBI has publicly cautioned against. Fix the wording before you automate it, because automation repeats a mistake a thousand times a month.
Member reminders worth automating first
Start with the reminders that have a fixed date and a single correct action. Those are the ones where a machine outperforms a busy clerk.
| Reminder | When it goes out | Best channel | Who acts on the reply |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed or recurring deposit maturing | 30, 15 and 3 days before maturity | WhatsApp, then voice call | Deposit clerk, for renewal or payout instruction |
| Monthly loan instalment due | 5 days before, and on the due date | WhatsApp or SMS | No one, unless the member replies |
| Instalment missed | Day 3 and day 10 after due date | Voice call, with WhatsApp follow-up | Recovery staff, on promise to pay |
| Pigmy or daily collection not received | Same week | SMS to member, list to agent | Collection agent |
| KYC or nominee details missing | Monthly, until resolved | WhatsApp with a form link | Branch staff |
| General body meeting and dividend notices | As per your bye-laws | SMS and WhatsApp | Secretary |
Two deliberate omissions. Do not automate anything that changes a member’s account: a renewal instruction, a waiver, a rescheduling. And do not automate the first contact on a legal notice. Those stay with a named officer.
What a society may and may not do when contacting members
Three sets of rules apply at once. None of them is optional because you are a society rather than a bank.
Telecom rules
Commercial calls and messages in India run under the Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations, 2018, amended in February 2025. In practice this means you register as a sender, register your headers and content templates, and send through a registered telemarketer. Promotional voice calls use the 140 numbering series; service and transactional calls use the 1600 series or another allotted series. Ordinary ten-digit mobile numbers are not for bulk commercial calling.
If a member revokes consent or opts out, you may seek consent again only after ninety days. A member may complain about an unsolicited commercial communication within seven days, and the access provider must act within five days. Members also register their own preferences by category, by day and by time band, so your dialler must respect the registered preference rather than your own convenience.
Conduct when chasing money
RBI’s 2022 circular on recovery agents binds regulated entities, not unlicensed societies. Copy its standard anyway, because it is the benchmark a court, a district registrar or an angry member’s lawyer will reach for. It bars persistently calling the borrower and calling before 8:00 a.m. or after 7:00 p.m., and it bars intimidation, public humiliation, intrusion on the privacy of family members and referees, anonymous calls and misleading statements.
Practical translation for a society: no calls outside 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., a cap on attempts per member per week, no messages to the member’s relatives or guarantors about the member’s balance, and no group messages that expose one member’s dues to another.
Member data
Member phone numbers, Aadhaar-based identifiers, account balances and photographs are personal data. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 were notified on 13 November 2025, with the substantive obligations on notice, consent, security safeguards, breach reporting and erasure coming into force eighteen months after that date. You have time to prepare, not a reason to skip it. Record how consent was taken, keep an opt-out list your dialler actually reads, and restrict who can export a member list.
A first 30 days plan
- Days 1 to 3: clean the data. Export members, mobile numbers, deposit maturity dates and loan due dates. Count how many members have no valid mobile number. That number, not the software, decides your result.
- Days 4 to 7: agree the rules. Write down calling hours, maximum attempts per member per week, what the system may never say, and which cases go to a person. Get the board or the secretary to sign it.
- Days 8 to 12: write the templates. One per reminder type, in Kannada and English, or your working languages. Keep them factual: amount, due date, branch, contact number. No claims of banking status or insurance.
- Days 13 to 18: register and connect. Sender and header registration, template approval, and a connection to your society software so due dates come from the ledger and not a spreadsheet.
- Days 19 to 23: pilot on one branch. Take one product, usually deposit maturity, and one branch. Run it live. Listen to twenty calls yourself.
- Days 24 to 27: fix what broke. Wrong numbers, members who did not understand the message, members who asked for a person and did not get one.
- Days 28 to 30: decide and extend. Compare contact rate and response rate against your manual baseline. Extend to a second product only if both improved.
The discipline of picking one narrow process, proving it, then extending is the same argument we made in five business processes worth automating first.
What to measure
- Contactable rate: members reached on the first attempt, as a share of those attempted.
- Response rate: renewals confirmed or payments received within seven days of the reminder.
- Staff hours returned: clerk hours previously spent dialling.
- Complaints and opt-outs: tracked weekly, with a hard stop if they rise.
- Overdue ageing: movement in the 30, 60 and 90 day buckets after three months, not after three weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Can we send reminders to guarantors when a member defaults?
Be very careful. The recovery standard RBI sets for regulated entities bars intruding on the privacy of family members, referees and friends of the borrower. Contacting a guarantor about their own contractual liability is different from broadcasting a member’s dues, and the safe route is a formal written communication from an officer, not an automated broadcast.
Do we need member consent for reminder messages?
Yes, and you should be able to show where and when it was taken. Add a consent line to the membership and loan application forms, capture the date, and keep a live opt-out list that the dialler checks before every campaign.
Our members speak Kannada and many cannot read. Does that rule out automation?
No. It rules out an SMS-only approach. Voice reminders in Kannada, with a short script and a confirmation read back, reach members that text never will, and the call outcome can still be logged against the ledger.
What should never be automated?
Anything that changes an account balance or a contractual term, any legal notice, and any conversation with a member in distress. Those need a named person and a written record.
Where this leaves you
The gain for a society is not clever technology. It is the same three staff covering four times the member base without letting a maturity date or an overdue instalment slip. AI Solutions by AIMatric handles reminder calls and WhatsApp follow-ups in Kannada, Hindi and English, with consent checks, permitted calling hours, promise-to-pay capture and a daily report, starting with a free 30-minute process audit.
Sources
- Caution against various Co-operative societies using the word “Bank” in their names, RBI, 29 November 2017
- Caution against various Co-operative societies accepting deposits, RBI, 30 June 2017
- Outsourcing of Financial Services, Responsibilities of regulated entities employing Recovery Agents, RBI, 12 August 2022
- Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2025, TRAI
- Preference Registration, TRAI
- Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, G.S.R. 846(E), 13 November 2025
