The Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is now examining, in consultation with regulated entities, the possibility of introducing alternate dispute resolution mechanism in various agreements (wherever possible) between the regulated entities and their clients.
The regulator had published ‘Investor Charter’ for the securities market last year besides announcing several other steps towards empowerment of investors,
“This is with a view to providing efficacious mechanism for resolving disputes between the investors and the regulated entities,” SEBI said in a statement on Monday.
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To further augment its efforts to protect investors’ interests, promote transparency in markets and enhance awareness, trust and confidence among the investors, the market regulator on November 17, 2021, had published the “Investor Charter” for securities markets.
Since then, various steps had been taken to implement the Charter, it said. Separate Investor Charters regarding investor related activities of various intermediaries had been developed by SEBI in consultation with the respective entities.
These separate Investor Charters had been developed for stock exchanges, depositories, SEBI registered intermediaries and regulated entities including Stock Brokers, depository participants, Asset Management companies, Registrar and Transfer Agents, Investment Advisers, Research Analysts & Merchant Bankers, it said.
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Stock Exchanges, Depositories and various intermediaries had since published the respective charters on their websites.
“These charters are expected to help investors to improve their ease of investing in Indian securities market,” SEBI said.
As for SEBI’s own charter, efforts had been taken to enhance the effectiveness of investor grievance-redressal mechanism. SEBI said it has been publishing the status of disposal of investor grievances received in SCORES (SEBI Complaints Redress System) on its website on a monthly basis.
“Details of investor grievances, which are pending for more than three months with different intermediaries, are also being published,” it said. “In case SEBI receives a large number of/repeated complaints on any issue, the root causes are analysed and if required, appropriate policy changes are made to address the issue,” it said in the statement.