Account Aggregator
Account Aggregator is an easy and secure system for customers to access and share their Financial Information (FI) across multiple entities (like Banks, Mutual Funds, Insurance, Equities etc.) (“Financial Information Provider” FIP) with Lenders/Service Providers (“Financial Information User” FIU) based on simple consent approval.
Account Aggregator act as an intermediary by collecting data from FIPs that hold the customer’s financial data and share that with FIUs, the stakeholders in Account Aggregator Ecosystem are as below:
- Account Aggregator (AA): RBI regulated entities, Account Aggregators facilitates to share data easily between different financial service providers, by consolidating all data in one place and providing a single digital framework to share it in real-time. It’s a safe, consent-based framework to ensure control over one’s data and quicker access to financial services.
- Financial Information Provider (FIP): Financial Information Providers (FIPs) are institutions that function as stewards of user data. These are the banks, mutual funds, pension funds, etc. that represent the ‘source’ of personal or business data which FIUs can access via requests through an Account Aggregator.
- Financial Information User (FIU): Financial Information Users (FIUs), like banks, lending agencies, NBFCs, etc. can receive digitally signed data from Financial Information Providers (FIPs). FIUs can use the data for purposes declared in the Consent Artefact or data-sharing agreement.
UCO Bank is live on AA Ecosystem since July 2022 both as a Financial Information User (FIU) and Financial Information Provider (FIP) and has integrated with various Account Aggregators (AA).
Steps for using Account Aggregator
Step 1 – Registration: Customer needs to register with any RBI licensed Account Aggregator to create an AA handle. They may use Mobile App of Account Aggregator or their portal and follow simple steps for their registration.
Registration with Account Aggregator is a simple process.
Customer provides the basic details like Name and mobile number and after mobile number verification through OTP, sets a pin/ passcode to create AA handle.
Step 2 – Account Discovery and Linking: Customer discovers accounts being held with multiple Financial Institutions based on mobile number and link them to AA handle through OTP validation.
Linking of the account to the AA Handle happens based on OTP Validation by the Bank with which the account is held by the customer. Linked accounts can also be unlinked at any time from the AA handle.
Step 3 – Consent based Sharing: Once Bank Account is linked with their AA handle, they may approve the consent raised by a lender/ service provider to fetch the Financial information of the accounts linked with their AA handle. AA fetches the data and shares it with the lender/ service provider in an encrypted manner.
AA facilitates to extract, aggregate and transfer encrypted Financial Information of the individual, but not to read or store the users’ encrypted data. No data can be shared without the customer’s consent.
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