The regulator has proposed allowing investors to self-declare their current overseas address where their officially valid document has been verified through an official or source databases
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Friday proposed easing the Know Your Client (KYC) process for individual persons resident outside India (PROIs), including non-resident Indians (NRIs), Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) and foreign nationals.The proposal seeks to allow such investors to complete digital KYC while staying outside India, provided they are located in a Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-compliant country. Currently, digital onboarding requires the client to be physically present in India.“In view of the representations received from stakeholders and to facilitate the inflow of investment into the Indian securities market, the extant KYC process for PROI clients is being reviewed, to simplify digital on-boarding while being outside India as well. This shall also lead to ease of doing business for the intermediaries,” SEBI said in a draft paper inviting comments by September 4.Digital KYCUnder the proposal, intermediaries would be allowed to accept KYC forms and supporting documents digitally, including through electronic signatures. Investors could also submit a cropped specimen signature digitally, with the wet signature subsequently verified during Video In Person Verification (VIPV).SEBI has also proposed making KYC records of individual PROIs portable. KYC Registration Agencies (KRAs) would tag individual attributes as “validated” where they have been verified against official or source databases.The regulator has proposed allowing investors to self-declare their current overseas address where their officially valid document has been verified through an official or source database.Intermediaries may also rely on KYC carried out by another SEBI-registered intermediary or an entity regulated by another financial-sector regulator, using records available through the Central KYC Records Registry.For investors outside India, VIPV would be subject to safeguards including live GPS coordinates, liveness checks, prevention of spoofed IP addresses, authorised-official verification and concurrent audit.Published on August 14, 2026
