SEBI Plans To Have A Single Framework For All Industry Standard Forums

The Securities and Exchange Board of India plans to formulate a single framework that will be applied across standard forums, Chief Madhabi Puri Buch said on Monday.

"We are planning to have a single framework for all and used across, be it listed companies, brokers, PMS, AIFs, FPIs... We have a large number of pilots running parallelly for us to get the learnings and we see tremendous benefit of this. We will take this sooner to our board," Buch said at the Brokers Industry Standards Forum in Mumbai on Monday.

The regulator envisages the framework to be defined based on learnings of various pilots to reach a common ground, aligning with consensus and regulations.

The regulator would need to come out with a regulation for the framework, she said. " We will need to come out with a regulation that we recognise the industry standards forum and the functions of the same... We will have to formalise the whole mechanism, which currently is working as a pilot."

The Brokers Industry Standards Forum has been working on giving recommendations on guidelines of implementing regulatory directives—for instance, the proposal for extension of trading hours.

The National Stock Exchange last year sought approval from the capital market regulator for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. trading sessions in index futures and options. Brokers are divided on the proposal and there are discussions happening among them as they are yet to reach a consensus on how it will work.

"Brokers industry forum has to get best practices on table and should suggest in a few months, after which investors will be consulted," said Buch.