Eight major banks have joined the account aggregator network that will enable customers to easily access and share their financial data.

These lenders include State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, IDFC First Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, and Federal Bank.

The Reserve Bank of India’s account aggregator framework went live on Thursday.

Neo bank Fi has also joined the account aggregator network and is one of the first fintechs to join the ecosystem.

“Access to financial data creates the potential to expand the delivery of financial products and services from what we have become accustomed to ...AA framework is designed to facilitate the sharing of financial data in a secure, transparent and efficient manner,” said M Rajeshwar Rao, Deputy Governor, RBI, at an online event to launch AA, organised by by iSPIRT.

“If a business has a digital footprint of its business, then that information can be used by a lender to make a decision to give that SME a working capital loan. Digital footprints when properly used, empowered by consumers using their own data, enables a huge amount of credit to small businesses. It can lead to the democratisation of credit,” said Nandan Nilekani, co-founder, Infosys.

AA ecosystem

“Four banks are already live with data accessible for consumers via Account Aggregators, and the rest will shortly go live. Many more banks are expected to join the AA ecosystem in the coming months to allow all customers, regardless of bank, to access their data,” said a statement.

Further, four NBFC-AAs including Finvu, OneMoney, CAMS Finserv, NESL have received operational licenses and three more — PhonePe, Perfios, Yodlee have received in-principle approval, it further said, adding that many more are in different stages of application.

HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have been using AA for auto loans, LendingKart has been using AA for MSME loans, while IndusInd Bank has been using it for Personal Finance Management.

According to Sahamati, which is a collective of AA ecosystem, AAs are NBFCs licensed by RBI, that act like a bridge, to collect data from, financial information providers that hold an individual’s personal financial data like banks, and share the data with, financial information users like lending agencies or wealth management companies that provide financial services to the individual.

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