The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 empowered arbitral tribunals to grant interim reliefs with the same enforceability as court decrees. From asset preservation and account freezing to repossession, mandatory financial disclosures, and emergency reliefs—Section 17 offers a wide range of tools.
Yet, across India's banking and NBFC ecosystem, institutional adoption of these provisions remains limited.
The reasons are layered. Legal teams remain cautious about enforceability in practice. Compliance and risk functions are uncertain about regulatory alignment. There is also a persistent misconception about whether interim orders can bind third parties, including banks holding borrower accounts.
This gap—between what the law permits and what institutions are willing to operationalise—will be the focus of a closed-door roundtable on May 5, 2026, at Taj Lands End, Mumbai.
Convened as a neutral, invite-only forum, the session will bring together 15–20 senior leaders from leading banks and lending institutions, alongside legal experts and dispute resolution practitioners.
What the Discussion Will Cover
The session will begin with a live walkthrough of an interim order—from application to enforcement—followed by a formal legal opinion on Section 17, covering enforceability, scope of reliefs, and third-party binding.
A practitioner panel comprising a retired District Judge, a former General Counsel of a leading private bank, and a senior advocate/partner will address institutional concerns across three key areas:
Legal validity grounded in statute and precedent
Operational feasibility within lending workflows
Regulatory considerations, including RBI guidance and borrower protection
The session will conclude with a 25-minute open forum for candid, peer-to-peer discussion.
Expression of Interest
While participation is invite-only, a limited number of additional financial institutions, NBFCs, and regulated lenders may express interest.
Institutions exploring arbitration-led dispute resolution or seeking to strengthen their approach to interim protections are encouraged to reach out to the Sama team by registering here.
About Sama
Sama is an institutional Online Dispute Resolution platform working with financial institutions, enterprises, and government bodies to deliver neutral, technology-enabled dispute resolution at scale.