A central registry will be established this month to store all records of a customer

                                      

You soon won't need to endure the `know your customer' (KYC) rigmarole at the start of every relationship with a financial intermediary as long as the verification has been completed once. Your record will be stored in a central registry that's going to be established this month.

The finance ministry has notified rules for the entity, which is expected to be functional very soon, cutting down on paperwork and red tape in financial transactions.

"Banks, insurance companies, stock market intermediaries would all be covered by this," a senior finance ministry official told .

The process starts with the customer fur nishing KYC de tails to a bank, for instance.

The bank will ls on to the registry, pass these details on to the registry, which will in turn verify the documents and issue a KYC identifier.This identifier can be quoted whenever any new account is opened.

Any changes can be sought at one of the reporting agencies, such as a bank, and these will be updated in the registry.

The permanent account number, Aadhaar, passport, driving licence or national population registry number will count as proof of identity. Currently, there is a common KYC for stock market products but not for banking and insurance. Customers have to go through the KYC process separately for every banking product even with the same institution. For example, KYC for a savings bank account does not work for opening a fixed deposit account.

This makes the process of acquiring a new financial product cumbersome.

The move is also expected to aid the government in its fight against black money and money laundering.