Sebi extends timeline for public comments on account aggregator proposal

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Sebi on Thursday extended the deadline to September 15 for submission of public comments on a proposal putting in place additional measures for the account aggregator framework to curb misuse of financial information like fraud and mis-selling.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had placed a consultation paper on August 1 seeking comments on the proposal by August 31.

"It has been decided to extend the timeline for submission of comments to September 15," the regulator said in a notice.

An Account Aggregator (AA), a RBI-regulated Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC), helps an individual securely and digitally access and share information from one financial institution they have an account with to any other regulated financial institution in the AA network.

AAs cannot see or store customer data since the data processed through them is encrypted, they merely transmit it from one financial institution to another based on a customer's direction and consent.

In its consultation paper, Sebi stated that there could be certain situations in the securities market when the "financial information" of a client could be sought using the AA framework. These include investment adviser and portfolio manager seeking information on financial assets or portfolio of the client via the AA framework in order to devise a financial plan for the client and verification of bank account wherever required when a client is on-boarded by an intermediary.

It was noted that though there are various safeguards in place and consistent communication advising caution, consumers sometimes adopt unsafe practices of sharing confidential information such as user IDs, passwords, OTPs, account numbers with third parties, and authorising third parties to operate their accounts.

"Such unsafe practices lead to frauds being perpetrated or funds and securities being misappropriated or financial products/services being mis-sold or customers being subjected to unsolicited cross-sell or upsell. It is in this context that comments are sought in improving the safeguards within the AA framework especially to curb misuse of the financial information in frauds, misappropriation, mis-selling or unsolicited cross-sell/upsell, etc.," it had stated.

The comment was sought on queries whether any type of intermediaries in the Indian securities market needs to be excluded from functioning as FIUs, the major potential use cases for the AA framework for Sebi-regulated entities and whether there are any additional categories of financial information that may be included under the ambit of the AA framework.