Who are the participants in the Account Aggregator ecosystem?

There are primarily two types of participants in the Account Aggregator(AA) ecosystem—FIUs and FIPs:

• FIUs are “Financial Information Users’. An FIU consumes financial data from other AA participants to provide various services to the end consumer. For e.g., a lender bank wants access to a borrower’s data to qualify them for a loan. Here, the lender bank wants to consume financial data of a borrower and is therefore called an FIU. 

• FIPs, on the other hand, are ‘Financial Information Providers’. FIPs are the many institutions that hold consumer data—banks, NBFCs, mutual fund depositories, insurance companies, pension fund depositories, and more. These entities on-board onto AA and share financial data on consumers, with FIUs, but only when the consumer has explicitly consented to do so.

It is important to note that entities can be both FIUs and FIPs—their definitions are determined by them either requesting for or sharing access to financial data. Both FIUs and FIPs are regulated by Sahamati, the entity that oversees all participants in the AA ecosystem.