International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA)

Context:

Recently, International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) for Supervisory Technology (SupTech) System.

Supervisory technology (suptech) is the use of innovative technology by supervisory agencies to support supervision.
The SupTech system shall cover administrative, compliance, supervision, and enforcement framework for its regulated entities.
The SupTech system will enable IFSCA to collaborate with other sectoral financial regulators in India and abroad through Application Programming Interface (API) based machine to machine communication or integration, as appropriate.

It was established as a statutory authority on April 27, 2020, under the International Financial Services Centres Authority Act, 2019.
It has been established at GIFT-IFSC, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
It is a unified authority for the development and regulation of financial products, financial services and financial institutions in the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in India.
At present, the GIFT IFSC is the maiden international financial services centre in India.

An IFSC enables bringing back the financial services and transactions that are currently carried out in offshore financial centresby Indian corporate entities and overseas branches/subsidiaries of Financial Institutions (such as banks, insurance companies, etc.) to India.
It offers a business and regulatory environment that iscomparable to other leading international financial centres in the world like London and Singapore.
IFSCs are intended to provide Indian corporates witheasier access to global financial markets, and to complement and promote further development of financial markets in India.
The first IFSC in India has been set up at theGujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City) in Gandhinagar.