Bangalore: Good news for bank account holders in the upcoming years. Now customers will not have to bear the hassle of going through tangible messy paperwork each time they wish to open a bank account.

Now, it is possible that Bank consumers can benefit from their single bank account, while accessing banking facility from multiple banks. While a similar approach for mobile and health insurance has existed too, but for banking operations, this has been introduced for the first time in India. Presently countries such as Sweden, UK, Australia, Hungary and South Africa are providing Bank account number portability.

As a traditional mode of banking, a customer who wishes to shift his/her bank location has to either open or close account to the respective place or switch to multiple bank accounts. But now, with the arrival of bank account number portability, a new perspective of bank operation has opened up which will allow its customer to access multiple bank interoperability without having to change their account number.

Talks are already on board between the Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India and other banks, including private sector banks to introduce this new system of banking in the coming years. To initiate this process, the banks have been advised to strictly follow to common Know Your Customer (KYC) norms while an expert committee will be put up to  explore more and provide more details in order to  implement the process effectively.

“We have started preliminary discussions with the RBI and banks, and they are on board. Bank account number portability will allow a migrant worker to shift his account from one bank to another simply by writing an application to his home branch,” said a Finance Ministry official, indicating the time period to be more than 3 years to materialize. The existing systems of advance banking such as ATM’s with core banking will offer an added help to regulate the process.

With growing threats of financial terror, customer confidentiality and security, the RBI has laid down plans for banks to prepare and monitor risk profile of customers to check the threats of money laundering. Money laundering induces customers to switch banks more frequently. Appropriate measures to combat money laundering and prevent people from switching banks would be taken.

Some banks have already started deregulation of interest rates on saving deposit, which has increased the tendency of most of the bank customers to opt for multiple banks offering higher interest rates. But now with the technique of bank account number portability, it will be possible to continue those services from multiple bank accounts using a single account number.