BSE sets up new corporate announcement filing system

Intends to give speedy, timely, accurate information on firms to investors as well as news agencies

Leading stock exchange BSE has set up a new corporate announcement filing system (CAFS) to provide speedy, timely and accurate information on listed companies to investors as well as news agencies.

The new system, which has been made operational since March 1, will disseminate information around the clock as well as provide a company's filing time and BSE dissemination time for users to verify the minimum delay between reporting and discourse.

"Current delay between reports by the company and availability of the information on website varies from two seconds to 10 seconds in most cases and the exchange is trying to improve and reduce the delay to less than two seconds," BSE said in a statement on Friday.

"By implementation of CAFS, the exchange would be initiating seamless dissemination of corporate announcements without pre-verification by the exchange," it added.

According to BSE, the move not to pre-verify information would help in instantaneous dissemination of company announcements on the exchange website and eliminate any time gap for price sensitive information to reach the investors.

"Post dissemination on the website, the exchange would carry out the verification checks for adequacy and accuracy as mandated by capital markets regulator Sebi from time to time, as is being done at present," BSE said.

In the first phase, corporate announcements related to 16 categories including financial results, change in the directorate, postal ballot, an outcome of a board meeting, change in credit rating, issue and allotment of securities, among others would be available under the CAFS system.

Certain filings like shareholding pattern, corporate governance report and voting results which are mandatorily filed through XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) mode would not be accepted through CAFS in the first phase, BSE said.

Besides, filings related to prohibition of insider trading norms, mutual funds and debt, will be covered under CAFS at a later stage, it added.

Designated company personnel, who file the corporate announcements with the exchanges, would be required to first register their identification details using one-time password verification post, which they would be allowed to submit corporate action for their respective company.