Investor complaints against listed firms and market intermediaries have touched a six-year high even as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has raised its pace of disposing such complaints to bring down the overall pendency.
According to SEBI’s latest annual report, it received 43,131 investor complaints against market intermediaries in 2017-18. This was the highest since 2011-12, when more than 46,500 complaints were received.
Steady rise
The number of investor complaints has been steadily rising over the years with the last dip registered in 2013-14 when 33,550 complaints were received as against 42,411 in the previous fiscal.
Investors can use SEBI's online Scores platform to register complaints against intermediaries such as stock brokers, listed firms, mutual funds, depositories, registrars, credit rating agencies, and stock exchanges.
While over 30 lakh complaints have been cumulatively registered with SEBI so far, it has managed to consistently reduce pendency with only 3,771 complaints pending as on March 31.
Of total pending grievances, only 647 were pending for more than six months compared with 984 grievances that were more than six months old and pending as on March 31, 2017.
An email sent to SEBI on Tuesday on the number of complaints in the current financial year and the latest pendency remained unanswered. “... the number of pending grievances has been steadily declining over the years due to expeditious disposal at the end of SEBI,” it said in the annual report.
Scores allows investors to directly lodge a complaint online, but SEBI uploads physical complaints as well into the system so that the overall status is reflected and includes all investor grievances.
In 2016-17, the system was tweaked to include a review module so that an investor can make a one-time request for review of his complaint that had been closed by SEBI. As on March 31, 2018, the cumulative number of review complaints was pegged at 3,875 and 1,303 were pending. An investor can lodge a complaint within three years from the date of the cause of the complaint. Once a complaint has been registered, an investor can even check the status of his complaint using the online platform.
