VIRTUAL LEGAL GUIDE AND KYC ARCHITECT

In order to prevent use of the formal financial system for illegal ends, international frameworks and domestic law require financial institutions to collect personal information from individuals at the time of opening accounts, as well as on an ongoing basis. These obligations give rise to privacy concerns, not least due to the quantity and nature of personal information collected by financial institutions. In this paper we seek to examine whether and to what extent the Indian KYC framework (as applicable to the banking sector) accounts for privacy rights in its design and implementation. We point to how the international framework established by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which forms the basis of the Indian Know-Your-Customer (KYC) framework, does not adequately consider privacy interests in its design, focusing almost solely on law enforcement interests.