Note: This article has been updated as on September 2023 to reflect changes in KRA validation.
At Dhan, we are building awesome experiences for all our users - Long Term Investors & Super Traders. We’ve always prided ourselves in our lightning fast experience & execution speed at everything we do 
Our experience starts right from the time you install the app and start onboarding and then continue with your first order, and then we strive our best to ensure we beat your expectations throughout your investing & trading journey with us.
For the longest time, while other investment platforms took several days to open broking accounts, Dhan has provided lightning fast onboarding experience, with near instant account opening process - over 90% of our accounts on Dhan were ready to trade in under 10 minutes 
Going ahead, this experience will unfortunately change, and we’re posting here to let you know that there has been some changes from a regulatory point of view that restricts us from doing this.
Changes at Exchanges:
As per a recent NSE circular, only valid/compliant UCCs will be allowed to place orders at the exchange and now exchanges will register these, verify and then allow clients to trade. While NSE has published a detailed FAQ on this topic, let’s quickly understand how this works:
When we onboard you as a client (KYC completed user), we are mandated to gather a lot of information as per exchange and SEBI guidelines. All of these are incorporated into a unique client code (UCC) that is generated at a broker-level and then sent to the respective exchanges and depositories for registration.
A few mandatory inputs in your UCC include:
- Name
- Complete Address including PIN code
- PAN
- Valid mobile number
- Valid email-id
- Income details/range
Collectively, these are also called the mandatory 6-KYC attributes. We make sure to verify and validate these details before we send them to the exchange; however, with the new circular in place, NSE has started validating on their end as well, July 4th 2022 onwards.
To quote from the circular,
“Under normal circumstances, UCCs identified as compliant by the Exchange at 22.00 hours on the previous day shall be considered as “permitted to trade” for the next trading day.”
To put it simply, we will no longer be able to allow our customers to trade immediately after opening their account on Dhan. If all your details have been verified post KYC & Onboarding and your Dhan account is opened today, you will be able to trade on the next trading day.
Changes at KRA:
KRA or KYC Registration Agency is a central repository of some basic information related to investors who trade or invest via securities market. As per SEBI and Exchanges, until your details at KRA is “validated”, we would not be able to send your details to Exchanges for UCC creation (as explained above).
To quote the SEBI circular, starting 1st September 2023,
“Clients whose KYC records are not found to be valid by KRA after the validation process shall
be allowed to transact in securities market only after their KYC is validated.”
The official timeline for KRA to validate your details is 2 working days.
While these changes may sound technical to an average investor, let me answer the most important question for now:
If I open an account today, when can I start trading?
If we take both these changes into account, from September 2023 onwards, it may take four working days to start investing on Dhan, after you complete your account opening process and your documents are verified by our team. Here’s a simple flowchart to help you understand:
Note: If one or more of your documents gets rejected, it depends on how soon the correct documents are uploaded and approved by our team - in this case, there is no definite timeline for the same.
While we do feel this is a step back in terms of speed, innovation and experience that we were providing, I hope our users would also appreciate that we are a regulated entity and have to function as per various norms & regulations from time to time. We will be in touch with exchanges and stakeholders to put forward our views and possibly reconsider this process.
Till then, we urge you to ask your friends and family to keep their investing & trading account on Dhan created and ready, to be able to trade any time they wish to.
Also a gentle reminder, at Dhan your trading & demat account is absolutely free for life. We do not charge any fees or subscription or platform charges for your account on Dhan or maintaining your demat account.
As always, if you wish to share any feedback with us, comment below or get in touch at feedback@dhan.co
-Anirudha
Product @ Dhan