SEBI relaxes digital KYC on-boarding for NRI and OCI individual investors

SEBI issued a circular on 4 November 2026 easing its Know Your Client (KYC) process for an individual 'Person Resident Outside India' (PROI) — defined to mean a Non-Resident Indian, an Overseas Citizen of India, or a foreign national — opening an account with a SEBI-registered intermediary. Under the KYC Master Circular of 12 October 2023, digital on-boarding required the client's physical location to be in India, in effect forcing overseas individuals to complete KYC only in person. The new circular relaxes this for an individual PROI client located in a country compliant with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), letting the intermediary accept digital submission of KYC documents from such a client.

It also allows a KYC Registration Agency (KRA) to tag individual data fields as 'validated' once checked against an official database, makes KYC records fully portable between intermediaries regardless of such tagging, lets an intermediary rely on KYC already done by another SEBI-registered intermediary or by an entity regulated by the RBI, IRDAI, PFRDA or IFSCA, and requires an authorised official to be present, under concurrent audit, during Video In-Person Verification. The changes, issued under Section 11(1) of the SEBI Act, 1992, supersede the relevant parts of the 2023 KYC Master Circular and two earlier circulars, and take effect from 3 December 2026 for every PROI client other than those from FATF non-compliant countries, who remain under the existing, stricter process.