How to become Financial Information Providers (FIP) in the Account Aggregator Ecosystem

15 Apr 2022

Financial Information Providers (FIPs) are institutions that function as stewards of user data. These are the banks, mutual funds, pension funds, etc. that represent the ‘source’ of personal or business data which FIUs can access via requests through an Account Aggregator.

As per the principle of reciprocity, every entity needs to be a FIP (Financial Information Provider) first and then an FIU (Financial Information User) to ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem.

Participants in the AA Ecosystem

How to become a FIP? Follow these steps:

  1. Get registered by any FSR
    According to RBI’s Account Aggregator Master Directive, entities who want to become FIUs need to be registered and regulated by at least any one of the Financial Service Regulators (FSR), namely — RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, PFRDA.
  1. Implement the FIP module
    Find the details and specifications published by ReBIT. There are RBI-defined API specifications that FIUs need to implement for their callback API functions.
  1. Test your FIP module 
    Test your FIP module against one or more of the Account Aggregator Sandboxes. These sandboxes are made by RBI-approved Account Aggregators like OneMoney, FinVu, NADL and more. 
  1. Enrol your FIP module
    Make it officially known that you’re testing. Enrol your module in the UAT-Central Registry, a directory of all entities that are testing their implementation in the development environment.
  2. Get certified
    Sahamati, the Collective of AA ecosystem gives an authorised panel framework to help you get your FIP module Certified. We strongly recommend to get your implementation certified with one of the empanelled certifiers.
  3. Start connecting and launch your services
    Get the FIU module details added by Sahamati to the Live Central Registry, which is a directory of all certified entities. Start connecting with account aggregators and launch your service with customers.

The current list of FIPs is listed here.