Instead of submitting a plethora of documents to each and every financial institution, the CKYCR — under the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India (CERSAI).
One can also avoid dataduplication and warehousing costs with the CKYCR. Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath says for the capital markets it has been a definite advantage that all entities are uploading data to the CKYCR.
BENGALURU: Along the lines of Tolkein’s “One ring to rule them all”, one of India’s most ambitious projects is the Central KYC Registry (CKYCR). It aims to do “one KYC for all accounts”. Be it banking, insurance or trading — the registry was supposed to make life extremely easy for the average Indian.
Instead of submitting a plethora of documents to each and every financial institution, the CKYCR — under the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India (CERSAI) — was supposed to be the master database, requiring only one-time submission of KYC details. Despite more than a lakh entities from the capital markets feeding their data into the registry since it started in June 2016, the project has still not taken off. This is primarily due to lack of participation by banks and insurance companies.
Except for a few banks, including Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank, most others have been dragging their feet over updating the database. “If all financial service customers are part of CKYCR, it will greatly improve the ease of doing business. It will provide a seamless experience across different financial service providers. And for the financial institutions themselves, the plus points would be reliable data from a credited source and greater convenience. Today, there are costs attached to verifying physically documents given by customers,” says Deepak Sharma, chief digital officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank.
CKYCR also offers the advantage of updated information. “Many a times, you do change mobile numbers or addresses, and the database will factor that in. Once the registry starts, it would act like a blockchain, where every financial institution is a node providing updated information to the system, adding to its robustness and accuracy,” Sharma added.
One can also avoid dataduplication and warehousing costs with the CKYCR. Zerodha founder Nithin Kamath says for the capital markets it has been a definite advantage that all entities are uploading data to the CKYCR.
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“KYC data and documents are stored in a digitally secure electronic format and can be retrieved at any point by users or institutions. There is also a CKYC number that gets generated for each individual user, when a bank/ broker uploads customer details,” he added
