Under the pilot, an NRI with an Aadhaar footprint could complete the onboarding process without assistance, allowing an investor overseas to digitally open an account and invest, the chairman said at the Global Fintech Fest.
“If the NRI has an Aadhaar footprint, he will be able to effortlessly get onboarded. We want the entire digital onboarding process and documentation process to be paperless, without any courier or wet signatures required,” said the IFSCA chairman.
The chairman said cross-border KYC and payments were the two key issues that needed to be addressed to enable NRIs to invest globally through the GIFT City platform and also invest in India.
IFSCA has also asked banks operating in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) to establish wealth management units. Several banks, including HSBC and State Bank of India, have already begun setting up such units, catering to high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) with global operations and family offices located overseas, he said.
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The banking ecosystem at GIFT IFSC is also expected to expand, with the total assets of banks in the centre projected to rise to around $200 billion by the end of the financial year from more than $143 billion currently, the IFSCA chairman said. There are 42 banks operating in the IFSC, including 21 foreign banks.
Rajaraman also said the IFSC was increasingly seeing financing for large assets, with Indian banks participating in loan syndicates and taking a share of the financing. He said the growing comfort among lenders had created an opportunity for the IFSC to support the acquisition of assets such as aircraft and ships.
