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Journalism of Courage
Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey on Saturday warned that any misconduct by market intermediaries with respect to client assets will not be tolerated.
He said that the market regulator has been regularly taking various initiatives towards the protection of client assets, since asset safety is important for investors to have confidence in the markets.
“While SEBI ensures that market participants are adequately supervised, egregious behaviour of intermediaries with respect to client assets cannot be ruled out and cannot be tolerated,” Pandey said at the Mint India Investment Summit and Awards 2025.
SEBI embraces latest tech monitor market misconduct
The chairman said the market regulator has embraced the use of latest technology and data analytics to detect market misconduct, such as, insider trading, front running, price manipulation and financial statement frauds.
Trades in the secondary market are under surveillance on a daily basis and alert systems have been put in place to detect suspicious patterns of trading. Market intelligence in the form of investors complaints as well as posts on social media also form an important part of SEBI’s surveillance mechanism.
“We are also regularly collaborating with other regulators and with law enforcement agencies for pooling of information in order to take more informed enforcement actions,” Pandey stated.
“I would say that in a dynamic and complex security market, maintaining market integrity is a continuing challenge,” he said.
Pandey said the stock market regulator has successfully teamed up with the market infrastructure institutions (MIIs) and market intermediaries to build robust market integrity. SEBI’s initiatives in this regard span a wide range — regulations, technology, supervision, surveillance, enforcement, investor awareness and resolution of investor grievances.
“Going forward, we need to constantly update and innovate in all these areas keeping in mind optimum yet effective regulatory stance,” Pandey said.
Market regulator building enforcement capacities
The SEBI chief has also taken steps to strengthen its investigation and inspection process by building capacity within internal teams and by relying on technology for obtaining data and analysing the same.
The improvement in strength of SEBI’s investigation and enforcement process can be gauged from the fact that more entities are now filing for settlement rather than litigating the matter and the settlement proportion has increased to 40 per cent, Pandey said.
