Nandan Nilekani, former head of UIDAI, has set up Sahamati, an account aggregator that will help individuals and small businesses share their digital financial data with third parties in a safe and secure manner. Using Sahamati’s platform, a user seeking a loan will be able to quickly share bank statements and other details required by lending institutions digitally through their choice of preferred account aggregator (AA) app. Also those seeking financial planning services will be able to share mutual fund, insurance, provident fund and banking details digitally through their AA app. It will be able to seamlessly obtain data from multiple service providers and deliver this via consent-based channels to financial information users, eliminating the need for individuals to physically visit multiple branches for their data. AAs are essentially NBFCs mandated by the RBI, whose main responsibilities are to provide services based on the explicit consent of individual clients. This primarily includes transfer, but not storing, of a client’s data. The AAs will not be able to read the data, nor will it be allowed to resell it. They will only be able to make money through the transactions. Nilekani said if Indians can leverage their footprints to get better loans and other financial products, it will be a step towards true data empowerment.
