The Account Aggregator framework has seen a huge increase in the number of accounts linked though some of the major public sector banks are yet to go live.
According to data by Sahamati, which is a collective of the AA ecosystem, there are over 1.49 lakh accounts linked across Financial Information Providers by February. As many as 1.34 lakh consent requests have also been fulfilled across Financial Information Users by the end of last month.
Sources said over ₹300 crore of loans were disbursed through the AA framework by major lenders. These include vehicle loans, personal loans and small business loans.
Since the AA framework went live on September last year, a number of lenders including Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Federal Bank and ICICI Bank have gone live on it.
By February end, 23 FIPs and FIUs were live, 25 were testing with AAs and 69 were in active implementation.
“Since Account Aggregator ecosystem was launched in September last year, all the large private banks have gone live. Four public sector banks are working extremely hard to go quickly live on the AA framework and have been supportive of the initiative. Sahamati is now focussing on cross-sectoral data flow,” said BG Mahesh, Co-founder, and CEO of Sahamati, collective of AA ecosystem.
Some of the major PSBs including State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda are yet to go live on the platform.
Sahmati’s website shows that SBI and Indian Bank are in the testing phase, Union Bank, PNB, BoB and Central Bank of India are in the in development phase.
An AA is a consent manager for financial data. They are NBFCs licensed by the RBI to collect data from, FIPs that hold an individual’s personal financial data like banks, and share the data with, FIUsthat provide financial services to the individual.
In a post-Budget meeting with heads of banks, NBFCs, and financial institutions, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had also urged banks to sign up to the Account Aggregator model which would facilitate seamless flow of credit for small borrowers and promote digital lending.