RBI allows retail bond traders access to NDS-OM

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday allowed demat account-holders with depositories to bid for trades in the online anonymous bond trading platform of the central bank. 
 

The platform so far was available only for institutional investors, but the central bank had announced in the first bi-monthly monetary policy in April that it would allow individual investors to use the platform too in order to increase retail participation in the bond market. 
 

The central bank had formed an implementation group for this purpose, which suggested that the trades for now should be done through an existing member of the trading platform known as Negotiated Dealing System-Order Matching (NDS-OM).

This will help to “facilitate efficient access to the retail individual investor to the same G-Sec market being used by the large institutional investor in a seamless manner,” the central bank said in a notification on its website. 
 

The demat account holders will also be allowed to continue with placing orders over telephone to their brokers, in which the responsibility of reporting such trades will rest with the primary member concerned.
 

The primary members should ensure that demat account-holders do not place sell order without sufficient balance of securities in the demat account, RBI said.