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In a meeting held in Mumbai, the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman has asked financial regulators – IRDAI, PFRDA, SEBI and RBI through the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) to expedite implementation of uniform KYC.
The FM told the council to take proactive steps to ensure that citizens have a seamless experience with reference to KYC processes across the financial sector.
The FM has also asked the FSDC to suggest measures to simplify and digitalize onboard process of NRIs including Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) and Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs).
Currently, NRI investors face KYC issues due to challenges in validating their Indian mobile numbers or email IDs, which are mandatory for maintaining an active KYC status. Also, the requirement to link Aadhaar with PAN, despite NRIs being generally exempt from Aadhaar, creates further complications, leading many to end up with an 'On Hold' status that blocks them from making financial transactions.
The FSDC also instructed regulators to return unclaimed assets to the rightful owners. This includes money lying unclaimed in bank accounts, insurance, pension funds and shares/mutual funds.
In fact, Sitharaman urged the regulators and departments to expedite the process of refund to rightful owners of unclaimed amounts by holding special district level camps. This drive is to be conducted in coordination with RBI, SEBI, MCA, PFRDA and IRDA along with banks, pension agencies, insurance companies etc.
The Union Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Choudhary attended this meeting. Among others in the meeting were Sanjay Malhotra, Governor, RBI, Ajay Seth, Finance Secretary and Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Nagaraju Maddirala, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance, Deepti Gaur Mukerjee, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Arvind Shrivastava, Secretary, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Anuradha Thakur, Officer on Special Duty and Secretary designate, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Dr. V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Chairperson, SEBI, K. Rajaraman, Chairperson, International Financial Services Centres Authority, Parmod Kumar Arora, Member (Actuary), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India, Mamta Shankar, Whole Time Member (Economics), PFRDA, Dr. Bhushan Kumar Sinha, Whole Time Member, Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, Dr. Sanjay Bahl, Director General, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) and Chanchal Sarkar, Secretary of the FSDC, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance.
Other key decisions include making financial rules more responsive, improving the safety of the financial system against cyber threats and helping more people use account aggregator network, which is a financial data-sharing system. It also focused on establishing a framework for improvement of response to regulations and instructions.
