Lto R–Ajay Seth, Finance secretary, Sanjay Malhotra, Governor, Reserve Bank of India,Nirmala Sitharaman,Union Finance Minister,Pankaj Choudhary,Union Minister of State for Finance and Nagaraju Maddirala, Secretary, Department of Financial Services at the 29th FSDC meeting on Monday in Mumbai
The unclaimed amounts comprise of deposits in banks, unclaimed shares and dividends are managed by Investor Education Protection Fund (IEPF), and unclaimed insurance and pension funds are with IRDAI and PFRDA respectively
Mumbai:Nirmala Sitharaman,Union Finance Minister, exhorted the financial sector services regulators to take proactive steps to ensure that citizens should have a seamless experience in KYC processes across the financial sector and further urged them to expedite the process of refund to rightful owners of unclaimed amounts by holding special district level camps.
Sitharaman, who chaired the 29th meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC), in Mumbai on Monday, emphasised that interest of common citizens to be kept in mind and therefore expeditiously refund the claims of the rightful claimants.
The unclaimed amounts comprise of deposits in banks, unclaimed shares and dividends are managed by Investor Education Protection Fund (IEPF), and unclaimed insurance and pension funds are with IRDAI and PFRDA respectively.
“This drive is to be conducted in coordination with RBI, SEBI, MCA, PFRDA and IRDA along with banks, pension agencies, insurance companies etc,”said Sitharaman.
The FSDC, among other issues , deliberated on issues related to macro financial stability and India’s preparedness to deal with them.
In light of the analysis of cybersecurity regulations, sectoral preparedness, and the recommendations of Financial Sector Assessment Programme (FSAP) 2024-25, the FSDC considered strengthening the cyber resilience framework of the Indian financial sector through a financial sector-specific cybersecurity strategy.
The FSDC discussed issues relating to formulating a strategy for implementing the past decisions and the budget announcements, which included:
-establishing appropriate framework by regulators for evaluating and enhancing responsiveness of regulations and subsidiary instructions;
-to take necessary steps to reduce the unclaimed assets in the financial sector (banks deposits, dividends, shares, post office accounts, insurance and pension funds etc.) and the expeditious and seamless refund of such assets to rightful owners;
-prescribing common KYC norms, simplification and digitalisation of the KYC process
-including digital onboarding for Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) including PIOs and OCIs, in the Indian securities market;
-analysing trends in financing flows as part of strategy to increase the investment ratio
taking measures to improve the reach and scope of factoring services and effective use of account aggregator networks.
The FSDC deliberated on the emerging trends from domestic and global macro-financial situation and stressed upon the need to be vigilant.
The Council recognised the need for proactive efforts to mitigate potential risks to financial stability while adopting adequate safeguards for financial system’s resilience.
The members decided to strengthen the inter-regulatory coordination for wider development of the financial sector.
The FSDC also took note of the activities undertaken by the FSDC Sub-Committee chaired by the Governor, RBI, and the action taken by members on the pending past decisions of the FSDC.
The 29th meeting of the FSDC was also attended by Sanjay Malhotra, Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI); Ajay Seth, Finance Secretary and Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance; Nagaraju Maddirala, Secretary, Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance; Deepti Gaur Mukerjee, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs; Arvind Shrivastava, Secretary, Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance; Anuradha Thakur, Officer on Special Duty and Secretary designate, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance;V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance; Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Chairperson, Securities and Exchange Board of India, K. Rajaraman, Chairperson, International Financial Services Centres Authority, Parmod Kumar Arora, Member (Actuary), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India and Mamta Shankar, Whole Time Member (Economics), Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority.