Know All About Account Aggregator Network

1. Know All About Account Aggregator Network

2. The Finance Ministry unveiled last week the Account Aggregator (AA) network in banking with eight of India's largest banks. It has been called by the ministry as a financial data exchange system that could revolutionize investment and credit, giving millions of consumers greater access and control over their financial records and expanding the potential pool of clients for lenders and fintech companies. The account aggregator gives the person control over their personal financial data, which would otherwise reside in silos.

3. What is an account aggregator? • Account Aggregator (AA) is a type of entity regulated by RBI (NBFC-AA license) that allows a person to share information securely and digitally from a financial institution in which they have an account with any other regulated financial institution on the AA network.

4. How will the new network of account aggregators improve the financial life of the average person? • India's financial system today involves many annoyances for consumers: sharing signed and scanned physical copies of bank statements, rushing to certify or seal documents, or having to share personal username and password to give financial aggregator history to a third party. The account aggregator network will replace all of this with a simple mobile-based, secure digital data access and exchange process. This will create opportunities for new types of services, such as new types of loans. • The individual's bank only needs to be connected to the account aggregator's network. An account aggregation system has been launched in banking with the eight largest banks in India, four are already sharing consent data (Axis, ICICI, HDFC and IndusInd Bank) and four will be enabled soon (State Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IDFC First Bank and Federal Bank). • How is the account aggregator different from Aadhaar'seKYC data exchange, credit bureau data exchange and platforms like CKYC? • AadhaareKYC and CKYC allow four fields of "identity" data to be shared for KYC purposes only (such as name, address, gender, etc.). Similarly, data from credit bureaus only shows loan history and credit score. The Account Aggregator network allows sharing transaction data or bank details of savings / deposit / checking accounts.

5. What kind of data can be shared? • Today, bank transaction data is available for sharing (for example, bank details of a checking or savings account) between banks that have been activated on the network. • Gradually, the AA framework will make all financial data aggregator available to consumers for sharing, including tax data, pension data, securities data (mutual funds and brokerage), and insurance data. It will also expand beyond the financial sector to make health and telecommunications data accessible to the individual through AA.

6. Can AAs see or 'add' personal data? Is the data exchange safe? • Account aggregators cannot see the data; they simply take it from one financial institution to another based on the direction and consent of an individual. Contrary to the name, account aggregators cannot "aggregate" someone's data. AAs are not like tech companies that collect someone's data and create a detailed profile of someone. • The sender encrypts the data shared by AA and can only be decrypted by the recipient. End-to-end encryption and the use of technology such as "digital signature" makes the process much more secure than sharing paper documents.

7. Can a consumer decide that he does not want to share data? • Yes. It is completely voluntary for consumers to register with AA. If the bank that the subscriber uses has joined the network, a person can choose to register with an AA, choose which accounts they want to link, and share their details in one of their accounts for some specific purpose with a new lender or financial institution. at the 'consent' stage through one of the Account Aggregators. A subscriber can refuse consent to share the request at any time. If a consumer has agreed to share data on a recurring basis over a period (for example, during the term of the loan), the consumer can also revoke it at any later time.

8. How can a client register with an AA? • Customers can sign up for AA through their app or website. AA will provide an identifier (such as a username) that can be used during the consent process. • Today, four applications are available for download (Finvu, OneMoney, CAMS Finserv and NADL) with operational licenses to be AA. Three more have received RBI approval in principle (PhonePe, Yodlee, and Perfios) and may be launching apps soon.

9. About Us • Licensed by RBI, the CAMSfinserv platform enables rapid, secure and consent-based sharing of financial asset information. This revolutionary concept is designed to benefit three key stakeholders viz. customers, financial institutions and businesses making reliable and machine-readable data available from the source to the recipient. CAMSfinserv platform brings high standards in data integrity and security to help unlock the value of financial asset information. • Website - https://www.camsfinserv.com/