ICRA Online to offer secure mobile messaging service

MUMBAI, INDIA: ICRA Online Limited, the information service provider and a wholly owned subsidiary of ICRA Limited, today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) to develop a secured mobile messaging platform for the mutual fund industry.

Under the agreement, ICRA Online will develop a messaging system on the existing SWIFT Net platform to provide secured messaging services to asset management companies (AMCs) and mutual fund houses. The service is expected to be rolled in the fourth quarter of 2010.

“ICRA and SWIFT have decided to work together to offer specialized services to the mutual fund industry and will invest in the areas of financial platforms and services. ICRA has never involved before in the fund transfer and payment process. This is for the first time we are into fund transfer and extending our services to customers,” said P K Choudhury, ICRA's vice chairman and group CEO.

Added Charles Legrand, SWIFT's head of South Asia, “SWIFT is always looking out for partnerships that mutually benefits and works with communities. Our vision is to eradicate paper and fax that can reduce the total cost of operations and our mission is straight through paper (STP) using automation.”

Using SWIFT Net platform, ICRA Online will build a messaging system to disseminate secured messaging related to financial transactions and payments that streamlines the information flow to speed up the transactions and payments for the mutual fund industry. This secured encrypted messages will be delivered on mobile phones to the individual investors or the end-customers.

In terms of functionality, the mutual fund houses or institutional investors can subscribe for the service from ICRA Online.

According to Sanjay Banerjee, ICRA Online Limited's executive director, normally individual investors fill up the fund applications and submit to the retail fund agents, after which the applications along with cheques are scanned and all the information are stored.

“And even for any net banking customer, the process remains the same. However, with the secured messaging system the process gets faster and automated. Here once the customer submits the application in order to buy certain number of units, this information gets processed accordingly to know your customer (KYC) norms,” said Banerjee.

Subsequently, a message is sent out to the customer for approval of transactions and accordingly payment is done from the customer's bank account immediately. This overcomes the cheque clearance time and processing and makes payment faster.

However, the secured mobile massaging service is yet to be developed and will need to look at key factors like downloadable mobile application and integration with platforms of operators. Moreover, an approval of regulators will be required before the service is rolled out to customers.