Stock brokers seek extension of cut-off date for C-KYC registration

The association of stock-broking firms will seek extension of deadline for registering with the Central Know Your Customers (C-KYC) norms, a top association official said on Saturday.

"The C-KYC deadline is December 31, 2016 and unless it is extended, there will be a total chaos and trading will be affected severely. We will seek for extension of the deadline early in the next week before market regulator and the government," said Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI) President Swatantra Kumar Rustagi.

He also said it was "impossible to complete" the process of verification and migration of KYC data of their existing clients to the Central KYC Records Registry "by December". Non C-KYC compliant investors could face a challenge in trading after the deadline if capital market intermediaries failed to complete the registration process with C-KYC.

 

In C-KYC, investors are required to submit their KYC details only once with any financial institution and subsequently, they are assigned a unique central KYC number which can be used across all financial products, including bank accounts, mutual fund investments, insurance policies and demat accounts.

According to Rustagi, there is a legacy database of 2.75 crore individuals who have invested in the capital market and are currently KYC compliant.

"It has taken several years for 10 KYC registration agencies to build up this data. Now this entire data has to be on boarded to C-KYC Records Registry by end of December (for intermediaries other than mutual funds). This is really a race against time," he said on the sidelines of an event organised by Indian Chamber of Commerce.

He also said that there were still glitches which are preventing even brokers to get registered.

The de-duplication process of C-KYC is complicated, he said.

Unlike the existing system where there was one unique identifier like PAN number while searching KYC status, but for C-KYC there are 6 identifiers including name, fathers name, date of birth, mother's maiden name etc., he added.

--IANS

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