Central KYC: All you Need to Know

KYC is a well-known term in the finance and banking community which stands for Know Your Customer. It’s exactly what it sounds like- a process that helps a company get the required personal information from a customer.

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For instance, when you want to open a bank account, the bank asks you to fill and submit a KYC form. Similarly, to invest in mutual funds you have to again submit a KYC form. The process is same in other institutions as well such as insurance providers, etc.

Central KYC

Initially, KYC requirement was redundant. It was an unnecessary hassle to submit the same KYC form at different institutions. To solve this problem, the government introduced Central KYC (cKYC) in July 2015 which is administered by the Central Registry of Securitization & Asset Reconstruction and Securities Interest in India (CERSAI).

Thus, now an individual has to complete the KYC process only once and the other institutions can get the information from a centralized database.

The individual receives a KIN (KYC Identification Number) after filling a cKYC form which can be used again and again when opening new bank accounts or investing in different schemes.

cKYC Process

You can easily complete the cKYC process by following these steps:

• Download the cKYC from your bank’s website or here.
• Fill the form and self-attest the required documents such as Voter ID, Aadhaar, Driving Licence, etc.
• Submit the form and other documents to your bank

You can check your application’s status by going to Karvy’s website and entering your PAN and a verification code. Clicking on the “search now” button will display your cKYC status. If the process is successfully completed you can see your cKYC ID too which you should note down for future use. This ID will play an important role when you have to update your profile or make investments, etc.

cKYC was a much-needed initiative that has been welcomed by the financial institutions and customers both. It’s made the traditional KYC process much simpler and faster today.