IFSCA pilots Aadhaar face authentication to ease cross-border KYC for NRIs

The regulator is piloting unassisted Aadhaar face authentication across four international jurisdictions to enable paperless digital onboarding for overseas Indians

The International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) is piloting unassisted Aadhaar face authentication with four international jurisdictions to simplify cross-border know your customer  (KYC) process for non-resident Indians (NRIs), as it seeks to make Gujarat International Finance Tec (GIFT) City a platform for global wealth management, IFSCA chairman K Rajaraman said on Friday.

 

Under the pilot, an NRI with an Aadhaar footprint could complete the onboarding process without assistance, allowing an investor overseas to digitally open an account and invest, the chairman said at the Global Fintech Fest.

 

“If the NRI has an Aadhaar footprint, he will be able to effortlessly get onboarded. We want the entire digital onboarding process and documentation process to be paperless, without any courier or wet signatures required,” said the IFSCA chairman.

 

 

The chairman said cross-border KYC and payments were the two key issues that need to be addressed to enable NRIs to invest globally through the GIFT City platform and also invest in India.

 

IFSCA has also asked banks operating in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) to establish wealth-management units. Several banks, including HSBC and State Bank of India, have already begun setting up such units, catering to high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) with global operations and family offices located overseas, he said.

 

The push is aimed at tapping the large pool of overseas Indians. NRIs remitted more than $140 billion to India last year, according to the chairman, who said a similar pool of money could potentially be invested through global markets.

 

The banking ecosystem at GIFT IFSC is also expected to expand, with the total assets of banks in the centre projected to rise to around $200 billion by the end of the financial year from more than $143 billion currently, IFSCA chairman said. There are 42 banks operating in the IFSC, including 21 foreign banks.

 

Rajaraman also said the IFSC was increasingly seeing financing for large assets, with Indian banks participating in loan syndicates and taking a share of the financing. He said the growing comfort among lenders had created an opportunity for the IFSC to support the acquisition of assets such as aircrafts and ships.