AMFI has asked registrar and transfer (R&T) agents to obtain consent of investors to access their Aadhaar data from UIDAI platform, said two sources familiar with the development.
This has come in the wake of Supreme Court’s order on Right to Privacy.
AMFI has been working on the guidance notice and is likely to issue it to R&T agents this week, said one of the sources.
Recently, the government has directed registrar and transfer agents of mutual funds to link Aadhaar number of mutual fund investors with their folios. The mutual fund investors will have to update their Aadhaar number before December 31, 2017. The government will freeze the non-compliant folios after this date.
R&T agents such as CAMS and Karvy have already launched Aadhaar linking facility on their websites for hassle free submission of Aadhaar details. However, they will have to wait to re-initiate this service.
A senior official from an R&T agency told Cafemutual that investors can either send a consent letter to R&T agents or give them an authority to access their information by submitting declaration through SMS or online platform.
Distributors will be required to help their investors link their Aadhaar number with their MF folios. In fact, a few distributors have started reaching out to their clients to make them aware of this development.
Ritesh Sheth of Tejas Consultancy Mumbai says that he is in a process to provide Aadhaar linking facility on his website. “I will provide back link of R&T agents through Application Program Interface (API) through which I can link this facility to my website,” he said.
In addition, both CAMS and Karvy have initiated awareness campaign on the need, urgency and importance of Aadhaar linking in mutual fund folios via online, call center, service center, help desks and social media platforms.
