central kyc Archives – Vipin Khandelwal

One of the biggest pain points in mutual fund investing has been the KYC or Know your Customer. Most likely you have gone through it. I have certainly.

From just a plain application in a physical to a mandatory In Person Verification or IPV. Then came along, in 2015, FATCA and Additional KYC details.

The worst is you need a KYC with every new service provider including a bank, mutual fund, insurance company, etc. I always wondered why can’t the system use just one KYC. This time probably the policy makers heard it and decided to make financial lives easier.

So, a new initiative called the Central KYC Registry was started in July/August 2016. Now, all KYCs across financial services have to sit in this Central KYC Registry.

We have lived through times where tedious paperwork defines every single activity related to money and our financial life.

Not just that, access to your own information was a nightmare with several agencies holding various parts of it. Every single time, the responsibility is on you to get it all together and prove that the person in question is you. This dreaded process is also called KYC.

Over the years, the hassles have reduced but not been eliminated. We have greater access to online tools with some organisations promising us completely seamless and paperless experience. We have all had the experience in some measure, small or large.

But I was recently floored by my interaction and experience with the government departments. This includes the Income Tax Department and UIDAI (issuer of Aadhar).

I would like to share some of these super initiatives with you.

This post highlights 5 such initiatives that aim to bring a significant change in the way you will handle your financial life.

Central KYC – I updated my KYC, completely online in just 10 minutes

5 ways to make your financial life easier