RBI asks banks to allot unique customer IDs

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to initiate steps to allot Unique Customer Identification Code (UCIC) to all their customers.

To begin with the UCIC should be allotted to customers entering into a new relation with a bank. Further, this code should be allotted to existing customers by banks by end-May 2013.

The UCIC will help banks to identify customers, track the facilities availed, monitor financial transactions in a holistic manner and enable banks to have a better approach to risk profile it’s customers, the central bank said.

The RBI said that increasing complexity and volume of financial transactions require that customers do not have multiple identities within a bank, across the banking system and across the financial system. To overcome this, it is important to pool information pertaining to different account holders in a centralised database.