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The Arbitration and Conciliation (Amendment) Act, 2015 gave arbitral tribunals the power to grant interim orders with the same enforceability as court decrees. Asset preservation, account freezing, repossession, mandatory financial disclosures, emergency reliefs etc- all available under Section 17. Yet across India's banking and NBFC ecosystem, institutional adoption of these provisions remains remarkably limited.
The reasons are layered. Legal teams remain cautious about enforceability in practice. Compliance and risk functions are uncertain about regulatory alignment. And there is a persistent misconception about whether interim orders can bind third parties, including banks holding borrower accounts.
It is this gap - between what the statute permits and what institutions are willing to operationalise - that a closed-door roundtable on "Interim Reliefs in Lending: From Legal Validity to Institutional Adoption" on May 5, 2026 at Taj Lands End, Mumbai, will seek to address.
Hosted by Sama and 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.
The session opens with a live walkthrough of an interim order - from application to resolution -followed by a formal legal opinion on Section 17 enforceability, available reliefs, and third-party binding. A practitioner panel featuring a Retd. District Judge, a former General Counsel of a leading private bank, and a senior advocate/partner will address institutional concerns across three dimensions: legal validity grounded in statute and precedent, operational feasibility of integrating interim reliefs into lending workflows, and regulatory sensitivity around RBI guidance and borrower protection. The session closes with a 25-minute open forum for candid peer-to-peer discussion.
While participation is invite-only, a limited number of additional financial institutions, NBFCs, and regulated lenders may express interest in attending. Institutions exploring arbitration-led dispute resolution or seeking to strengthen their approach to interim protections are encouraged to reach out for consideration.