Outlook Money OLM - FEBRUARY 2018 | Page 20

News Roll

Facial recognition and Virtual ID to strengthen Aadhaar

UIDAI has rolled out two new features to nix privacy concerns , says Anagh Pal
Photo : Tribhuvan tiwari

Worried about the safety of your sensitive , personal information due to news around compromise of Aadhaar data ? Unique Identification Authority of India ( UIDAI ) has come up with two antidotes — facial recognition and virtual ID — in an attempt to eliminate possibilities of such data breach and misuse .

Facial recognition will be made available from July 1 as a means of authentication along with a combination of fingerprints , iris scans or OTP to verify Aadhaar details . This will come as a relief to the elderly , many of whom have lost clarity of their fingerprints , and for those engaged in manual labour . Since a photo is captured at the time of Aadhaar enrollment and already stored in the database , there will be no need to capture any new data .
However , some concerns remain . Says Rakshit Tandon , cyber security expert and consultant – IAMAI ( Internet and Mobile Association of India ), “ whenever any new technology is introduced , one needs to check all the security aspects and understand the possibility of misuse .
Reliance MF : targeting low-income households

In India , a large section of society lacks awareness about investing in mutual funds . In spite of record inflows , the penetration of mutual funds remains dismally low . A 2016 SEBI survey says that while 95 per cent of Indian households prefer to park their money in bank deposits , only 9.7 per cent prefer to invest in mutual funds .

According to Reliance Nippon Red Herring Prospectus data , mutual funds as the percentage of net financial savings was as low as 1.32 per cent in 2012 financial year , going up to 1.53 per cent and 2.94 percent , in 2015 and 2016 , respectively .
This means that there is a huge growth opportunity for mutual funds . Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management is trying to increase their investor base through several initiatives to reach out to the masses and educate them about investing through mutual funds and realizing their long-term financial goals .
One such initiative involves reaching out to Uber drivers across the country . “ We are targeting lowerincome households to help them invest wisely within which we are focusing on Uber drivers . From our target group , most of them either do not invest or end up investing in schemes that lack credibility ,” says Sundeep Sikka , Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer , Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management .
Each interested Uber driver partner is given a thorough understanding of the investment solutions . The idea is to make them aware that goals like
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Outlook Money February 2018 www . outlookmoney . com