Account aggregators
Intuition
The Account Aggregator (AA) framework is India's consent-based financial data sharing architecture. It allows individuals to share their financial data, bank statements, insurance policies, mutual fund holdings, pension accounts, GST returns, with third parties of their choice, in a secure, digital, and revocable way.
The transformative insight: instead of asking customers to download and email PDFs (easily faked), a lender can now request data directly from the source (the bank) with the customer's real-time digital consent. This dramatically reduces the cost and fraud risk of financial data collection, and opens the door to accurate, real-time credit underwriting for millions of previously underserved customers.
The AA ecosystem is part of India's larger DEPA (Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture): a framework for giving individuals control over their own data across sectors (financial, healthcare, telecom). The financial data layer (AA) is the most advanced.
Mechanics
Three roles in the AA ecosystem:
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FIP (Financial Information Provider): Holds the data. Banks (RBI-regulated), NBFCs, AMCs, insurance companies, pension funds, tax authorities (CBDT), GST Network. Must connect to the AA network via API.
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FIU (Financial Information User): Requests the data. Lenders, wealth managers, personal finance apps, insurance underwriters. Must be registered with a financial regulator (RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, PFRDA).
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AA (Account Aggregator): The consent manager in the middle. Does NOT see the data content, only manages the consent flow and routes encrypted data from FIP to FIU. Licensed by RBI as an NBFC-AA. Current licensed AAs: Finvu, Onemoney, NADL, PhonePe AA, Setu (Pine Labs), Anumati.
Consent flow:
- FIU requests data consent from customer (specifying data type, date range, purpose, frequency, expiry)
- Customer receives notification via AA and approves/rejects
- AA requests data from FIP
- FIP sends encrypted data via AA to FIU
- Customer can revoke consent at any time
Data types currently live: Bank account data (statements, balance), mutual fund holdings, insurance policies, NPS (pension), GSTN data (pilot)
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