Sebi now receives lesser complaints, resolves them at faster pace

Even as number of investors has risen, shows SCORES data

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has received fewer complaints on average so far this year, despite monthly grievances rising from their June lows.

The markets regulator received an average of 3,011 complaints every month so far in the 2022-23 financial year (FY23), shows an analysis of data collated from the Sebi Complaints Redress System (SCORES). This is a 15.4 per cent decline over the 3,558 average monthly complaints in FY22. The average monthly figure was higher in FY21 (4,906), FY20 (4,627) and in the pre-pandemic year of FY19 (3,517).

On the other hand, the number of investors has risen significantly over the years. There are now over 100 million investor accounts compared to 40 million in FY19.

Even as complaints decrease, the number of days it takes to resolve one has dropped from 36.8 days in October 2021 to 29 days as of September 2022. The lowest average resolution time was in April 2022 when it hit 24 days.

The system often addresses complaints by forwarding it to the entities against which investors are filing complaints. The concerned entities are required to send a written reply to the investor and file an action taken report in the complaints platform.

The majority of investor complaints are against stock brokers, according to yearly data from the Sebi annual report. There were 11,261 complaints filed against stock brokers in FY22. The next biggest source of complaints were issues related to refund, allotment, dividend, transfer, bonus, rights, interest and redemption matters which accounted for 6,789 complaints. Registrars to an issue and share transfer agents were the source of 3,877 complaints; mutual funds were next -- with 3,866 complaints -- followed by depository participants with 3,794 complaints.  

“Of the 42,694 new complaints received during 2021-22, 37,425 complaints (or 87.2 per cent) were e-complaints, while remaining 5,460 complaints (or 12.8 per cent) were physical in nature,” noted the 2021-22 Sebi annual report.

The largest number of complaints were received at the head-office and accounted for nearly half the investor complaints received.  The northern region (which includes Delhi and others) was second and accounted for nearly a fifth of the total. This was followed by the western region (14 per cent) excluding Daman and Diu as well as Maharashtra and including states like Gujarat and Rajasthan.  The remaining complaints came from the southern and the eastern regions.