Central KYC (CKYC)
Central KYC (CKYC) is a centralised repository maintained by the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India (CERSAI) that stores the Know Your Customer (KYC) records of individuals once, allowing all regulated financial entities to access the same record without repeated documentation.
The CKYC initiative, launched by the Government of India in 2016 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), addressed a perennial frustration for Indian financial consumers. Before CKYC, an individual opening a bank account, a demat account, a mutual fund folio, and an insurance policy had to submit identity and address proof documents separately to each institution — effectively undergoing the same KYC process four times. CKYC was designed to eliminate this duplication by creating a single authoritative KYC record stored centrally.
When a customer completes KYC with any regulated entity — a bank, mutual fund, stockbroker, or insurance company — that entity uploads the verified KYC data to the CKYC registry operated by CERSAI (which was already managing a security interest registry for loans). The customer receives a 14-digit CKYC number. Any other regulated entity can retrieve the verified KYC data using this number, eliminating the need for fresh document submission.
The rollout of CKYC has been gradual and somewhat uneven. Mutual fund AMCs were among the early adopters, and SEBI mandated that AMC-completed KYC records be migrated to CKYC by a specified date. Banks followed, though the migration of legacy KYC records required significant operational effort. Insurance companies and NBFCs were progressively integrated into the CKYC ecosystem.
For individuals, the practical benefit became visible particularly in the context of mutual fund investing. Earlier, a person who had completed KYC through one AMC's KRA (KYC Registration Agency) often needed to redo KYC when investing through a different AMC on a different platform. With CKYC, a valid CKYC record should theoretically suffice across all regulated entities, though implementation inconsistencies have occasionally required supplemental verification.
CKYC also supports anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) objectives. A centralised registry enables regulators and financial intelligence units to trace the financial footprint of individuals across multiple institutions more efficiently than when records were siloed within each entity.