Number of investor accounts rises 4.2% in Feb

The cumulative number of investor accounts at the country's two depositories - NSDL and CDSL - rose by 4.2% to 2.18 crore in February, year-on-year, as per Sebi data.

The total number of investor accounts at the depositories stood at 2.09 crore in February, 2013.

National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL) - allow investors to deposit securities by opening a account. The securities like shares, debentures, bonds of investors are held in electronic form (dematerialised form) at the depositories.

The total number of investor accounts was 1.30 crore at NSDL and 87.30 lakh at CDSL at the end of February.

"The number of investor accounts in February 2014 decreased by 0.3% and 0.2% over the previous month at NSDL and CDSL respectively," Securities and Exchange Board of India said.

"A comparison with February 2013 showed there was an increase in the number of investor accounts to the extent of 3.8% at NSDL and 5.4% at CDSL," it added.

The total value of securities in dematerialised form at the depositories stood at little over Rs 80 lakh crore at the end of February, a rise of nearly 7% over the same period in 2013.

NSDL registered demat securities worth Rs 71 lakh crore while CDSL recorded more than 9 lakh crore securities on its platform, as on February 28, 2014.

Besides, the cumulative quantity of securities in dematerialised form stood at 45,199 crore at the end of February 2014 compared to 43,009 crore in the year-ago period.

The quantity of dematerialised securities on NSDL and CDSL stood at 36,069 crore and 9,130 crore respectively.