Key Highlights

April 24, 2023

CAMS WealthServ transforms client onboarding for AIF and PMS funds. The Company witnessed huge traction from over 75 AIFs & PMS houses for its digital onboarding solution that provides a frictionless, digital experience to high-net-worth clients. More than 20% of Alternatives’ customers were onboarded using the 100% digital solution. CAMS WealthServ is an intuitive digital interface that enables the ‘first-time-right’ investor application process. The platform is designed to ease and expedite the onboarding of HNI clientele. Opening accounts for AIF and PMS investors and executing transactions are typically time-intensive and iterative processes, often extending to several days. With WealthServ, the onboarding process to account activation is done within a few hours. The platform comprehensively supports all ecosystem connects and is compatible with multiple downstream platforms. It supports the onboarding of a wide range of investors covering individuals, non-individuals, NRIs, and accredited investors. WealthServ offers an array of robust user validation methods including user liveness check, PAN authentication, document verification and bank account validation in real-time using AI capabilities built into the platform. WealthServ also has additional features like a custodian module for custodians to access the documents, configurable reviewer flow to verify the details, eNach to register mandates, and stagewise e-sign flow. Additionally, it is integrated with payment gateway, providing multiple payment modes including cash and securities to facilitate STP, partial STP, and lumpsum transactions. The entire flow is seamless, eliminating the friction between the processes while assuring quality.

May 4, 2023

The Company released a report on new millennials titled “The emerging force of millennial investor is here to stay & grow” at the 17th CII Mutual Fund Summit held in Mumbai on May 3, 2023. The report was released by Mr. Manoj Kumar, Executive Director, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the presence of Mr. Sundeep Sikka, Chairman CII WR Taskforce on Banking & Finance, CII Mutual Fund Summit & ED and CEO Nippon Life India Asset Management, Dr. Rajesh Kapoor, Regional Director, CII Western Region. The report on new millennials based on data from Mutual Funds serviced by CAMS as a Registrar and Transfer Agent (RTA) brings out trends, behaviours, and preferences of the millennial segment and the emerging opportunities from this segment for the benefit of mutual fund managers and the ecosystem partners. The report brings insights based on 10 of the top 15 mutual funds serviced by CAMS. The report focusses on the new millennials who have entered the mutual funds arena in the last five-years (FY19 - FY23). It includes actionable insights for asset managers, intermediaries, advisors, and service partners, covering several key areas. These insights emerge from (the millennials’) demographics, preferences in investing, SIP trends, preference for intermediation and advisory services, diversification and stamina to stay invested. According to the report, millennials have been the dominant segment among the new investors who entered mutual funds in the last five-years.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT INCLUDE:

1.57 crore new investors during the five-year period (FY19-FY23) entered CAMS serviced funds. Of these 1.57 crore, 84.8 lakh were millennials with a 54% share. Of these 84.8 lakh, nearly 26% were women
85% of the new millennial entrants came from urban locations – T 30 locations. This segment has cumulatively added 1.54 crore SIPs during the five-year period
A sizeable number (33 lakh) have also diversified across funds houses over the five-years, having investments in more than one fund house

Digital and straight-through investment via electronic platforms is significant at 75%. Paper is still prevalent in B30 locations
Gross inflows from millennials across the five-years were over
₹ 1,00,000 crore, of which over ₹ 65,000 crore was into equity schemes (Growth & Equity Oriented Schemes & Hybrid schemes)
The AUM of the millennials who stayed through the five-years stands at ₹ 96,000 crore as of March 2023

May 11, 2023

The Chief Financial Officer of the Company, Mr. Ramcharan Sesharaman, was honoured with the prestigious “FE CFO Award 2023”. The 6th edition of the FE CFO Awards was held in Mumbai on May 09, 2023. The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Mr. Nitin Gadkari was the chief guest of the event and bestowed the awards to India’s best Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), chosen by a six-member external jury chaired by HDFC vice-chairman and CEO Keki Mistry. ITC chairman and managing director Mr. Sanjiv Puri addressed the gathering on the topic, “Redefining growth and competitiveness for tomorrow: An ITC perspective”. The data for the selection process was provided by Deloitte. The achievements of more than 20 other CFOs, from a wide range of companies were recognised. The winners were chosen from companies in two categories – manufacturing and services categories – and across sub-categories based on the turnover of the company. The FE CFO Awards celebrate excellence, best practices, and outstanding achievements by India’s leading Chief Financial Officers. CAMS was selected in the Small Enterprises category, and our CFO, Mr. Ramcharan Sesharaman was honoured with the prestigious “FE CFO Award 2023”. Mr. Ramcharan Sesharaman was recognised for his excellence as CFO of CAMS. We are incredibly proud of
Mr. Ramcharan’s achievements and his contributions to our organisation’s success.

July 20, 2023

Think Analytics India Private Limited(“Think360.ai”),the subsidiary of the Company, has been recognised by FinTech Global in their 3rd Edition of the AIFintech100 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies developing AI technologies in financial services. Think360.ai is the only company in India and amongst the five companies in Asia-Pacific to receive this coveted recognition. FinTech Global is the world’s leading provider of fintech information services, B2B media products, and industry events, and serves a network of over 3,00,000 fintech professionals to provide them with essential business information and help them connect with potential investors, clients, and partners. AIFintech100 list showcases the finest companies serving as a key reference for financial institutions seeking cutting-edge AI solutions to solve industry-specific challenges, drive efficiency, and create new customer propositions. Think360.ai has made it to FinTech Global’s Top 100 list for having demonstrated significant ability to solve industry problems, innovate, grow in terms of capital raised, increase revenue, and gain customer traction. It provides clients with potential cost savings, efficiency improvements, improves the value chain and generate more revenue for clients. The other Asia-Pacific companies that were named in FinTech Global’s list are Singapore’s Bolttech, Australia’s BGL Corporate Solutions, Japan’s Cinnamon AI, and Malaysia’s Finology.

Think360.ai making it to the Top 100 list is a seminal event in the Company’s journey to establish itself as an AI powerhouse for the FS segment and will bolster CAMS and Think360.ai analytics and AI offerings to clients. The Company made a strategic investment in TAIPL by way of a secondary acquisition amounting to 55.42% of the total paid-up share capital in April 2023. The product and solution suite of Think360 AI is being offered with the Account Aggregator services, which has significantly enhanced the product offerings in the digital public infrastructure space.

July 31, 2023

CAMS launched an industry-first AI-embedded KYC solution to onboard customers instantly. With the new CAMSKRA solution, businesses can verify the identity of their new customers in a seamless, frictionless process without breaking the onboarding journey and completing the KYC registration within ten minutes. Leveraging custom image classification & extraction models using AI, CAMSKRA KYC provides comprehensive verification of identity, including Aadhaar OTP, PAN card, and Bank account. With this near-instant KYC solution, businesses can enjoy the twin benefits of providing smooth customer experience and improve conversion rate with KYC completion and transaction in one continuous journey. In addition to bringing speed and ease, CAMSKRA is also highly secure. The platform uses industry-leading security measures to protect customer data. This includes encryption, data backups, and access control. Commenting on CAMSKRA’s break-through solution, Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director, CAMS said, “An industry first, we are thrilled to offer the AI-backed seamless KYC solution that will change the dynamics of KYC registration process where customers can be onboarded within minutes. The convenience of our Aadhaar-based eKYC for KYC submission in combination with the 10-minute KYC registration process makes our KYC suite a compelling and unique offering for capital market entities.

The solution will vastly improve new customer onboarding and offer enhanced data security measures with best-in-class industry certifications BCMS, SAFE and advanced BitSight. We have registered nearly a million KYCs for Mutual Funds and Stockbrokers since the recent launch of this AI-embedded technology.” CAMSKRA’s API-based platform is easy to integrate with existing CRM systems making it easy for businesses to get started with CAMSKRA and to keep customer data updated at all times. CAMSKRA’s low code integration with partner’s tech stack, flexible APIs, encryption-decryption support, and ongoing monitoring make KYC integration a simple process for businesses. “With this new solution, we aim to transform the time-sensitive investing process. Traditional KYC registration takes days and is completed in minutes, eliminating the time-consuming manual verification process. This also brings cost reduction and improved accuracy.” CAMSKRA is also the only KRA to introduce digital KYC modification where customers can make changes to their KYC records online, without having to submit paper requests and visit branches. This includes updating mobile number, email ID, and address details. API kit makes it easy for businesses to integrate CAMSKRA digital KYC modification solution into their own systems conveniently and securely, helping them to keep their KYC records updated at all times.

August 21, 2023

CAMSfinserv, one of the first RBI licensed Account Aggregators (AA) in India, announced onboarding of all seventeen AMCs (Asset Management Companies) serviced by CAMS as Financial Information Providers (FIPs) on the AA platform, making it the first in the industry to provide access to mutual fund data. This integration of mutual funds with the CAMSfinserv platform will play a significant role in the development of the AA framework in India. Customers will be able to access and share both their mutual fund holdings and bank account transactions from a single and secure platform, track their investments, identify areas where they can save and make better financial decisions in a more convenient and hassle-free way.

This will help Asset Management Companies to attract and retain customers by simplifying the access and management of their financial data, improve risk management, ensure compliance, personalise financial offerings, and improve or innovate existing operational processes. Commenting on the significant milestone, Mr. Anuj Kumar, Managing Director, CAMS said, “We are extremely excited about ushering the Asset Management industry into Account Aggregator space with the onboarding of all seventeen Mutual Funds served by CAMS on the CAMSfinserv AA platform. This is a seminal event in the development of the AA ecosystem in India, given its potential to uplift the financial experience of the 2.7 crore MF customers we serve.” “Onboarding mutual funds will also enable faster and easier loan approvals (like pre-approved loan against mutual funds), updated single view of customer asset information, and better investment recommendations by wealth management platforms. Our innovative solution for bank validation has the potential to replace ubiquitous penny drop-based bank account verification” CAMSfinserv is a leading Account Aggregator in the country with fifty-four entities (Banks, MFs, Insurers, Depositories, GSTN) live on its platform as financial information providers.

This gives CAMSfinserv’s 100+ FIUs unparalleled reach to the Indian financial ecosystem to pull citizens’ data and build end-to-end seamless digital journeys based on customer consent, provide cutting-edge, innovative solutions to their B2B2C journeys, and offer hyper-personalised, sachet solutions backed by reliable data. While CAMSfinserv provides holistic solutions to FIPs & FIUs through Account Aggregator services, CAMS’ subsidiaries Sterling Software and Think360.ai provide Technology Service Provider (TSP) services and Data Analytics services enabling FIPs & FIUs to bring innovative, world-class, consent driven, secure, reliable and highly efficient digital data solutions to the Indian financial ecosystem. Bank Statement Analyser, Personal Finance Manager and GST Analyser are some of the key offerings of the Data Analytics services of Think360.ai.

January 18, 2024

CAMS released a report on “Alternative Funds - Insights on Investors and Intermediation”, at the Equalifi’s 11th Indian Alternative Investment Summit 2024 held in Mumbai. As a large platform and service partner to the Alternatives segment, CAMS has done the study across multiple dimensions on data of 180 Alternative fund houses serviced by CAMS, which represents a significant share of the market. The report focusses on alternative assets trends over a five-year timeframe on the asset inflows across categories, investor segments, demographics of investors, intermediation patterns, and off-takes in locations and brings actionable insights and direction for asset managers, intermediaries, and advisors. The report shows growing participation from younger investors, expanding intermediation and advisory that can bring acceleration to the Alternatives segment which is already at the cusp of exponential growth. The influence of digital can be powerful, as the segment begins to attract the “digital native” generation. Therefore, the adoption of digital solutions by the ecosystem for onboarding, ongoing services, and for managing the entire lifecycle of the customer is of urgent need. The geographic spread of customers from over 100 locations beyond the top-tier cities points to the expanding wealth in the hinterland and alternatives emerging as a product choice is noteworthy.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT INCLUDE:

The Alternatives industry has grown exponentially in the last five-years at a 38% CAGR and is pegged to grow 27-29% CAGR by FY27. Enabling regulatory framework, declining attractiveness of real assets, superior returns profile & structuring options, and liquidity are key drivers of growth
Women investors making up over a third of the investor base is a great sign of their confidence to choose Alternatives-led wealth creation, narrowing the gender divide in the traditionally male-dominated investment space
32% of the base are women investors, the assets share held by this segment is also equally high at 32%
The most notable trend is the changing investor profile in terms of age. The dominance of >60-year-olds in FY19 has been shifting steadily towards younger investors making their foray into Alternatives

February 2, 2024

The Company expanded its AI-powered customer onboarding solutions to the insurance sector by securing a major mandate from Oriental Insurance Company Limited (OICL). CAMS Insurance Repository Services Limited (CAMS Rep), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CAMS and the 2nd largest Insurance Repository in India won the digital KYC mandate from OICL, its first non-life insurance client. This mandate marks one of the largest KYC contracts for CAMS Rep and signifies its strong entry into the non-life insurance sector. In January 2023, IRDAI mandated KYC for all non-life insurance policy purchases. With an estimated 25 crore retail policies sold annually, providing a robust KYC solution is critical for the seamless onboarding of policyholders. CAMS Rep is well-positioned to address this need with its advanced AI-powered platform. The modern, state-of-the-art customer onboarding, Digital KYC, Video KYC, and risk assessment stack is built on KwikID, the proprietary solution of Think360 (Think Analytics India Private Limited), another subsidiary of CAMS.

The solution covers the entire online KYC journey for both retail and corporate customers, ensuring a smooth and secure onboarding experience across all OICL’s distribution channels. CAMS made a majority investment in Think360 in April 2023, and the Company plays a pivotal role in building AI-enabled offerings along with CAMS for the BFSI landscape. KwikID capabilities include 100+ APIs for native KYC validation across UIDAI/ Digilocker/ CKYC/ Aadhaar XML, facial recognition and OCR for document verification, intelligent call routing and multilingual support, geo-fencing for location verification and ID document encryption and masking for data security. Besides KwikID for KYC, customer onboarding and digital customer experience, Think360’s product suite includes AAmaze for harnessing the power of Account Aggregator Ecosystem with ML/AI models, Algo360 for customer lifetime value management using alternative data and FlowXpert for low-code partnership and API management infrastructure. CAMS’s KYC and KRA services now serve both capital market and BFSI segments including top mutual funds, leading brokerages, prominent fintechs, banks, NBFCs, and insurance carriers.

March 19, 2024

CAMS launched an additional, new facility in GIFT City. Earlier in 2021, the company set up an office at GIFT City to provide Asset Management Support Services for financial institutions which have set up / setting up operations in GIFT City. The new office will enhance our scope of GIFT City offering to go beyond servicing GIFT City AIFs to new industries like insurance and pension and administration for overseas funds. The company has won the first ever overseas fund administration mandate from an UAE-based fund.

April 2, 2024

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India(“IRDAI) has notified the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Protection of Policyholders’ Interests and Allied Matters of Insurers) Regulations, 2024 which has mandated the issuance of insurance policies by insurance companies in electronic form with effect from April 1, 2024. CAMS Insurance Repository Services Limited, (“CAMSREP”), one of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Company is an IRDAI-registered insurance repository and is facilitating the issuance of policies in the electronic mode. CAMSREP, incorporated in the year 2011, is presently the second largest repository in the country with 60 lakh e-insurance accounts (eIA) and 72 lakh electronic policies maintained in its repository. CAMSREP is engaged with 45+ insurers (life and non-life insurers) for their electronic policy issuance. The Company is also in the process of establishing the Bima Central platform as an industry solution to facilitate policyholder transactions from a single platform.

April 13, 2024

The Company approved the appointment of Mr. Pravin Udhyavara Bhadya Rao (DIN: 06782450) as an Additional Director of the Company for a term of three consecutive years with effect from April 13, 2024, subject to the approval of the shareholders. Mr. Pravin Udhyavara Bhadya Rao (DIN 06782450) holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical Engineering) Degree from B. M. S. College of Engineering, University of Bangalore, India, and worked with Infosys Limited (formerly Infosys Technologies Limited) from 1986 to 2021. He retired as the Chief Operating Officer of the company in December 2021. He was also a whole-time director of Infosys Limited and the interim CEO and MD for a brief period and was the Chairman of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies) in FY21. Presently, Mr. Pravin Udhyavara Bhadya Rao is a Director on the Boards of Suven Pharmaceuticals Limited, Zensar Technologies Limited, Indegene Limited and Axis Finance Limited.