Under the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms, established bank customers are required to produce their PAN card, telephone or electricity bill to prove their identity afresh. This is needed in spite of having passbooks that show transactions over several years and cheque books. This becomes a particular problem because of the frequency with which branch managers and bank staff are transferred to avoid their developing vested interests within a branch. So bank staff no longer know their customers that well. As a result, established customers have to frequently produce KYC documents, a practice that vitiates the goodwill between bank staff and customers. To me it seems the KYC system reflects a No Knowledge System of the central bank, which surely should understand that the old practice of producing passbooks and cheque books and having a long-standing relationship with the bank staff worked fairly successfully.
Rajaram P Vaidya, Mumbai
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