PAN card has now been included on par with other officially valid documents for the use by information utilities to verify the identity of users.
According to the amended technical guidelines issued by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI),insolvency regulator, on Wednesday, these guidelines require the information utility to obtain a sub-authentication user agency licence from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for demographic authentication of users during the registration process.
IBBI has introduced the provision of ‘deemed authentication’ for debts reported as defaulted when there is no response from the debtor after three reminders.
Notably, an information utility is mandated to provide core services such as accepting electronic submissions of financial information, ensuring its safe and accurate recording, as well as authentication and verification. It also provides access to stored information for specified persons.
The financial information it stores is person’s debts and instances of default, liabilities when the person is solvent, records of assets over which security interest has been created and their balance sheet and cash flow statements.
As of now, National E-Governance Services Limited (NeSL) is the only information utility registered with the IBBI. Most institutional financial creditors submit financial information to NeSL.