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A new credit analyst sees Account Aggregator consent in the loan journey but does not understand who the parties are or what the lender actually receives.
The account holder consents; the bank as Financial Information Provider sends the data; the Account Aggregator carries it without reading it; the lender as Financial Information User receives it with a consent record.
Request only the accounts, period and purpose needed, record the consent reference with the file, and still run statement analysis on the data received.
Bank data received direct from the bank with a consent trail, ready for analysis, and no editing step between bank and lender.
An Account Aggregator (AA) is an RBI-regulated intermediary that carries a person’s financial data from their bank to a lender, but only after the person gives consent. The AA passes the data on in encrypted form without reading it. It manages the consent, not the content.
Who are the parties in an AA data request?
| Party | Formal name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| The borrower | Customer, account holder | Approves or rejects the request |
| The bank | Financial Information Provider (FIP) | Holds the data and sends it |
| The Account Aggregator | NBFC-AA, licensed by the RBI | Records consent and carries the data |
| The lender | Financial Information User (FIU) | Asks for and receives the data |
Account Aggregators are licensed under the RBI’s Master Direction on NBFC-Account Aggregators, issued in 2016. They are “data blind”: they are not allowed to read, store or use your financial data for their own purposes.
What does a consent request contain?
A consent request tells you, in plain terms:
- Who is asking (the lender).
- Which accounts they want.
- What period of data they want, for example the last 6 months.
- Why they want it (the purpose, such as loan underwriting).
- How long the consent lasts and how often data can be fetched.
You can approve, reject, or later revoke consent from the AA’s app.
What does a lender get through AA that a PDF cannot give?
- Data direct from the bank. The data comes from the bank’s systems, not from a file the borrower downloaded and uploaded.
- A consent record. The lender has evidence that the borrower approved this specific request for this purpose.
- No editing step. Because the borrower never handles the file, there is no chance to alter it on the way. With a PDF, the lender has to check for tampering.
- Structured data. The data arrives in a standard format, so it does not need to be read off a PDF page.
What AA does not do is the analysis. The lender still has to work out income, obligations, returns and risk flags from the transactions. AA data and PDF statements both need that step.
Worked example: a ₹5,00,000 loan with AA consent
A small manufacturer applies to an NBFC for a ₹5,00,000 working-capital loan.
- The lender’s app shows an AA consent request: one current account, 6 months of transactions, purpose “loan underwriting”, one-time fetch.
- The owner reads it and approves it in the AA app. The process takes about 2 minutes.
- Within the same minute, the bank sends the 6 months of data through the AA to the lender.
- The lender’s credit team analyses about 600 transactions: average credits of ₹3,20,000 a month, EMIs of ₹18,000, no returned debits.
- The consent reference is saved with the loan file.
From that data, the analyst works out room for the new loan. Six months of credits total ₹19,20,000 (₹3,20,000 × 6). If the lender assesses income at, say, ₹96,000 a month after costs, and its policy allows total EMIs of about half of that, the ceiling is ₹48,000. Less the existing ₹18,000, room for a new EMI is ₹30,000. A ₹5,00,000 loan over 2 years at an illustrative 18 percent needs about ₹24,960 a month, so it fits. Each lender applies its own policy and income method.
If the owner’s bank had not been available on the AA network, the lender would have asked for a PDF statement instead and checked it for authenticity before analysis.
Why does AA matter for small businesses?
It replaces visiting the branch for a stamped statement or emailing PDFs. It also gives the borrower control: you see exactly what is being asked for and can say no.
What to read next
- Next in this series: Account Aggregator vs PDF bank statement upload
- Where analysis is still needed: manual vs automated bank statement review
- When the PDF route is used: bank statement OCR in India
- For lenders: Account Aggregator bank data for lenders
TransactIQ is a managed service on Terra Insight’s AWS Mumbai infrastructure that analyses bank data received through Account Aggregator or as PDF statements, and produces 40+ engineered credit signals. It is not itself an Account Aggregator.