Introduction to KRA

Overview

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) mandates a standardized KYC process for mutual fund investors, facilitated by KYC Registration Agencies (KRAs)

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KRAs store and manage KYC data on behalf of SEBI-approved intermediaries, such as mutual funds, streamlining the process by centralizing investor information. This ensures that investors do not need to repeat KYC verification when interacting with different intermediaries.

SEBI Registered KRAs

The following is a list of all the five SEBI registered KRAs:

• CSDL Ventures Limited (CVL)
• International Dotex Limited
• Karvy Data Management Limited
• NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML)
• CAMS Investor Services Private Limited

Async vs Sync Endpoints

The KRA Upload APIs are available in two modes:

Mode	Behavior	Downtime Handling
Async	The request is submitted and processed in the background. The response is delivered via webhook once processing is complete.	If the KRA is temporarily unavailable, the system automatically retries until the data is successfully pushed.
Sync	Data is pushed to the KRA in real time. The response is returned immediately.	No retry logic. If the KRA is unavailable at the time of the request, the call fails.

Recommendation

Use the async endpoint for production integrations. It provides built-in retry handling, making it resilient to KRA downtime.

KRA Interoperability

KRA interoperability refers to the ability of KRA agencies to communicate with each other when a user's KYC data is held by one KRA but an investment is being processed through an intermediary registered with a different KRA.

How It Works

Consider the following scenario: a user's KYC was originally registered with CAMS KRA. The user now wants to make an investment through Investment Bank 'A', which is onboarded with CVL KRA.

1. Bank 'A' calls the Search & Verify API using the user's PAN number.
2. The API returns the user's KYC status and indicates that the data is held by CAMS.
3. Since Bank 'A' is onboarded with CVL, it must push the KYC data to CVL using the Upload API; but with appUpdtflg set to interop_modification.
4. Upon receiving this value, CVL identifies that the data belongs to CAMS and routes the request to CAMS for validation.
5. CAMS validates the data and returns the result to CVL, which then responds to Bank 'A'.

Throughout this flow, the user's KYC data remains with CAMS, and is not transferred to CVL. CVL acts as the intermediary channel in this transaction.

The interop_modification Flag

The interop_modification value for appUpdtflg is the trigger for this flow. If this flag is not passed when required, CVL will reject the upload request. Use the appStatus and appUpdtflg mapping table to determine when this flag applies.

List of APIs

The following table lists the available KRA APIs for CVL and CAMS:

KRA	Search & Verify API	Download API	Upload API
CVL	CVL Search & Verify API	CVL Download API	CVL Upload API
CAMS	CAMS Search & Verify API	CAMS Download API	CAMS Upload API