Insurance, securities entities to use Aadhaar authentication services under PMLA

The Finance Ministry has allowed 29 insurance companies and nine stock/securities entities to undertake Aadhaar Authentication services of UIDAI under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 ( PMLA).

This would allow these entities to perform e-KYC in real time and would also reduce the cost of their transactions, Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said.

This would also be beneficial to the customers or the investors, especially the small and retail investors, as they need not submit physical papers or documents for Know-your-client (KYC), he said.

The Finance Ministry has allowed these entities to use Aadhaar authentication services under PMLA subject to the satisfaction of their regulatory authorities, namely IRDAI and SEBI respectively that they are complying with the standard of privacy and security as per the Aadhaar Act. This would ease their KYC process and would reduce cost and time besides preventing money laundering activities, if any, an official release said.

On the insurance front, e-KYC has been permitted for 20 private life insurers (almost all life insurers registered with IRDAI), three standalone health insurers and six general insurance companies. The three standalone health insurers who have got the approval are Apollo Munich Health Insurance, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance and Religare Health Insurance.

The six general insurance entities are Kotak Mahindra General Insurance, Future Generali India Insurance Company, Acko General Insurance, Royal Sundaram General Insurance, SBI General Insurance and HDFC Ergo General Insurance.

In the case of securities, the entities that have got approval are Bombay Stock Exchange, National Securities Depository Ltd, Central Depository Services ( India) Ltd, CDSL Ventures, NSDL Database Management, NSE Data and Analytics, CAMS Investor Services, Computer Age Management Services and Link Intime India.

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