New Delhi, The Finance Ministry has issued two notifications to enable different insurance companies and stock/securities entities to undertake Aadhaar authentication of UIDAI under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, subject to compliance with standard security and privacy measures as per the Aadhaar Act.

The Ministry's Department of Revenue has so far allowed 29 insurance companies and nine market entities -- including Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance, Bharti AXA Life Insurance, HDFC Life Insurance Company, ICICI Prudential, BSE, NSE, NSDL, Central Depository Services -- to use verification services of Aadhaar and e-KYC in real time.

Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, formerly the CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), said on Saturday that the two notifications allow these entities to access the Aadhaar platform.

"The permission will help these entities to perform in real time, do e-KYC and also reduce their cost of transaction," he said.

"This will also be beneficial to customers or investors, especially small and retail investors, as they need not submit physical papers or documents for KYC," Pandey added

The ministry has allowed these insurance and securities entities to use Aadhaar authentication services under the PMLA subject to the satisfaction of their regulatory authorities, namely the Insurance Regulatory Authority of India (IRDA) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) respectively that they are complying with the standard of privacy and security as per the Aadhaar Act.

This would ease their KYC process and would reduce cost and time besides preventing money laundering activities.

Other entities given this permission include Max Life Insurance, PNB Metlife India Insurance, SBI Life Insurance Future Generali India, Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, Manipal Cigna Health Insurance, Religare Health Insurance, NSE Data and Analytics, CAMS Investor Services, Computer Age Management Services, and Link Intime India.