Single Financial Statement: Sebi, RBI, Irdai Consider Offering Unified View Of Savings, Investments, Pension, And Insurance

An all-in-one statement for all financial assets may soon be the reality. This would show one’s financial details, such as bank deposits, investment in mutual funds, pension, and insurance in one statement. It would ease the burden of maintaining different documents to track one’s own money, remembering several passwords, and downloading different apps. Regulators of different financial domains, such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), are mulling a proposal to include their domain-related information in a single statement, as per a Business Standard report.

As of now, investors can access their mutual fund, stock investment, and National Pension System (NPS) related investment details in the consolidated account statement (CAS) every month. But for other financial details, investors have to visit different websites.

NPS is the newest addition to the CAS. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), through a circular dated August 10, 2023, included NPS details in the CAS. CAS is a monthly statement issued by Sebi-registered depositories: National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) and Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL). Earlier, CAS included only demat accounts and mutual fund holdings of investors.

Reportedly, the Sebi has initiated the discussion and put the proposal before other regulators to offer investors a unified dashboard, showing a complete picture of their finances, including their savings accounts, provident fund accounts, insurance, bond holdings, and even the outstanding loans.

Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Sebi chairperson, informed that the proposal is under discussion, and it may remain optional for investors whether they want all the information in one statement or keep it as it is. The unified statement may not mandatorily be issued to all.

Consolidating all information in one single statement is difficult, but possible with some technical information sharing, like sharing the application programming interfaces (APIs). When regulators reach an agreement for it and share the data through APIs, it would be linked with permanent account number (PAN) details, and investors, using their PAN details, would be able to check their financial standing in a single statement.

At present, e-CAS is sent to investors every month to their registered email addresses. It shows details of demat, mutual fund, and NPS investments, the change in portfolio valuation over one year, and the current balance, among other details.