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A 14-digit KYC Identification Number in CERSAI's central registry, letting any regulated financial institution reuse a customer's verified KYC instead of redoing it.
A CKYC number, formally a KYC Identification Number or KIN, is a unique 14-digit number allotted to a customer whose Know Your Customer records are stored in India's Central KYC Records Registry (CKYCR). The registry is a single, sector-wide repository of KYC records covering banks, non-banking financial companies, insurers, mutual funds and other regulated intermediaries. It was authorised by a Ministry of Finance notification in November 2015 under the Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 and its rules, and went live in July 2016. It is operated by CERSAI — the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India — a government company set up under the SARFAESI Act, 2002. The purpose is inter-usability: a customer completes full KYC once, and any other reporting entity can then download those verified records against the KIN with the customer's consent, instead of collecting and verifying documents afresh.
Type: ProcessA 14-digit number, also called the KYC Identification Number (KIN), unique to each individual or entity and issued once
Sector-wide by design — the same record serves banking, insurance, mutual funds, NBFCs and pension intermediaries, which is what separates CKYC from the earlier KRA system that served only the securities market
Operated by CERSAI, a government company under the SARFAESI Act, 2002, on behalf of the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance
Statutory basis is the Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 and the PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005, which require reporting entities to upload KYC records of new customers to the registry and to upload any updated record
Consent-based retrieval — a reporting entity may download a customer's records from CKYCR only with the customer's authorisation; possession of the KIN alone is not access
Records cover identity, address, photograph, signature and related proof; the customer is notified when a KIN is generated
CKYCR 2.0, announced in the Union Budget 2025 and rolling out through 2026, moves the registry from static document images to real-time API-based exchange, adds Aadhaar masking and OTP-based consent, and gives customers a self-service portal to see and correct their own record
Not the same as e-KYC, video KYC or a KRA. Those are methods of performing or holding verification; CKYC is the central registry where the completed record is deposited and reused
Frequency: Moderate to high in banking and insurance exams, where CKYC, CERSAI and KYC norms are standard financial-awareness material; occasional in UPSC Prelims through CERSAI or the PMLA
CKYC turns KYC from something each institution repeats into something the system stores once and lends out on consent.
Step 1 — A customer opens an account or buys a product from a reporting entity and completes full KYC with identity and address proof
Step 2 — The entity uploads the KYC record to the Central KYC Records Registry in the prescribed format
Step 3 — CERSAI runs a de-duplication check against existing records and, if none matches, generates a 14-digit KIN, which is communicated to the customer
Step 4 — When the same customer approaches a different bank, insurer or fund house, they supply the KIN instead of the full document set
Step 5 — That institution seeks the customer's consent and downloads the verified record from the registry, and may seek fresh documents only where something has changed or the record is incomplete
Step 6 — Any change of address or other update is uploaded back to the registry, so subsequent users read the corrected record
14 digits (KYC Identification Number, KIN)
Central KYC Records Registry (CKYCR)
CERSAI — a government company under the SARFAESI Act, 2002
Ministry of Finance notification, November 2015
July 2016
Prevention of Money-Laundering Act, 2002 and PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005
RBI Master Direction on KYC, 25 February 2016, as amended
Banking, insurance, securities, NBFCs, pensions
CKYCR 2.0 — announced in Union Budget 2025; API-based, Aadhaar masking, OTP consent, customer portal
Before CKYC, a customer with a bank account, an insurance policy and a mutual fund folio had been verified three times over with three sets of photocopies, and each institution carried the cost and the risk of its own file. Centralising the record cuts onboarding time and cost, shortens the distance between a first-time customer and a financial product, and gives regulators and investigators one place to trace a customer's footprint across sectors — the anti-money-laundering purpose that the PMLA basis makes explicit. The counterweight is concentration: a single national store of identity documents is a high-value target and a single point of failure, and errors in a shared record propagate everywhere at once, which is why CKYCR 2.0's customer-facing correction portal and consent architecture matter as much as its speed. For students, CKYC is also the cleanest illustration of the wider Indian pattern of building shared digital public infrastructure — one verified record, many users, consent at the gate — that also underlies Aadhaar e-KYC, DigiLocker and the Account Aggregator framework.
CKYC number = KIN, 14 digits, issued once per customer
Registry CKYCR, operated by CERSAI (a government company under the SARFAESI Act, 2002)
Authorised by a Finance Ministry notification in November 2015; live from July 2016
Legal basis: PMLA, 2002 and PML (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005; for banks, the RBI Master Direction on KYC of February 2016
Covers banking, insurance, securities, NBFCs and pensions — inter-usable across the financial sector
Records can be downloaded only with the customer's consent
CKYCR 2.0: announced in Budget 2025 — real-time APIs, Aadhaar masking, OTP consent, self-service portal
Do not confuse with SEBI's KRA system, which is limited to securities-market intermediaries
Fourteen. The CKYC number is formally called the KYC Identification Number (KIN) and is allotted once per customer when their record enters the Central KYC Records Registry.
CERSAI, the Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest of India — a government company established under the SARFAESI Act, 2002 — on behalf of the Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance.
Not quite. An institution can fetch your verified record from the registry with your consent instead of collecting documents afresh, but it may still ask for fresh proof if something has changed, if the stored record is incomplete, or where its own regulator requires additional verification.
e-KYC is a method of completing verification electronically, usually against Aadhaar. CKYC is the central registry in which a completed KYC record is deposited and from which other regulated institutions can retrieve it. One is the process, the other is the repository.
An upgrade of the registry announced in the Union Budget 2025 and rolling out through 2026. It replaces static document images with real-time API-based exchange, introduces Aadhaar masking and OTP-based consent for data access, and gives customers a portal to view and correct their own record.
India's government-run digital document wallet, where issued certificates hold the same legal validity as the original physical documents.
The 2002 law that lets banks seize and sell a defaulter's secured assets without going to court, and created the market for asset reconstruction companies.