Page 27 - Banking Finance June 2022

ARTICLE

RBI'S ACCOUNT

AGGREGATORS

FRAMEWORK WILL

REVOLUTIONISE

FINANCIAL

INCLUSION

ast year in September, India's latest financial data- blind manner between regulated entities. Specifically, they
L Account Aggregators network. This launch marked (FIPs) and Financial Information Users (FIUs). FIPs hold the
sharing system went live with the unveiling of the
enable data flow between Financial Information Providers
a major milestone in our nation's journey towards
customer data, and FIUs consume data to offer better
enabling financial inclusion for all its citizens. As the service and underwrite loans.
government press note said, the network "could revolutionise
investing and credit, giving millions of consumers greater The system currently enables sharing only of banking
access and control over their financial records." transaction data (for example, bank statements from a
current or savings account) with other entities. Gradually,
Under this framework, India now has a set of Account it will make all financial data available for sharing, including
Aggregators, a new type of RBI-licensed and regulated tax data, pensions data, securities data (mutual funds and
entities. Individuals like you and me can choose any of the brokerage), and insurance data. The long term vision is to
Account Aggregators to securely share information from any expand the AA network beyond financial services to even
bank or a financial institution that we have an account with, include healthcare and telecom data.
to any other bank or financial institution, provided both
parties have joined the AA network. Democratising Credit
Before account aggregators came into the picture, entities
In other words, AA are a type of data intermediaries that used a process called screen scraping, where third party
facilitate sharing of financial information in a real-time data- applications collect screen data and translate it to display
on another application. Additionally, sensitive information
was exposed through the screen scraping process. AA was
About the author
the natural solution to it in the form of user consent driven
Ankit Ratan architecture, as no data can be shared by any AA without
Cofounder and CEO the consent of the individual involved.
Signzy, a leading banking
infrastructure enabler The AA ecosystem makes it a regulated and legitimate

BANKING FINANCE | JUNE | 2022 | 27