Banks keen to know customers better, address verification layers

Banks are working on updates to strengthen their KYC (Know Your Customer) standards by adding extra verification layers to identify accounts and account holders. Under the plan being discussed with the Reserve Bank of India and the government, lenders would update all existing accounts, especially those with a single phone number linked to multiple or joint accounts. Banks would also seek more verification from individuals having multiple accounts opened with different documents.

This comes even as the government has set up a committee led by finance secretary TV Somanathan to standardise and ensure KYC norms are interoperable across the financial sector.

“We are looking at multi-level secondary identifiers such as PAN,

Aadhaar, and unique mobile number (UMN) for joint accounts as well,” said a senior bank executive aware of the matter.

The secondary identifiers will allow tracing multiple accounts of an individual if they are not linked and are opened with different KYC documents.