Sebi's complaint redressal rate hits record high at over 95%

An online system to resolve investors' complaints against various entities in the capital market has helped regulator Sebi achieve a new record of a successful grievance redressal rate of over 95%.

The cumulative number of investor grievances received by Sebi stood at about 28.34 lakh at the end of 2012, out of which over 27 lakh complaints were resolved successfully -- resulting into a redressal rate of 95.3 %.

This is the highest ever grievance redressal rate recorded by Sebi as yet, surpassing the previous record of 94.9 % at the end of the fiscal year 2011-12, shows the data compiled by the regulator for its latest Handbook on Securities Markets.

The final data for the end of the last fiscal 2012-13, which ended on March 31, is not available as yet.

Between April-December 2012 of the last fiscal, a total of 33,832 investor complaints were redressed, up from 29,058 redressals in the same period of previous fiscal.

The number of grievances received by the capital markets regulator during April-December, 2012 was 24,277.

The cumulative redressal rate had earlier improved during the fiscal year 2011-12 from 94.5 % to 94.9 %, while it has been
mostly between 92-94 % over the past decade.

The implementation of a new web-based investor complaint redressal system, SCORES, in June 2011 has helped in faster resolution of grievances. The system provides for online movement of complaints to the listed companies, uploading Action Taken Reports (ATRs) by the concerned companies and helps investors view, track and follow up on their grievance.

As per the latest Sebi data, the number of regulatory and penal actions taken by Sebi against various entities also reached a record high level of 1,486 during the fiscal year 2011-12, from only 389 in the preceding year. This is the first instance of the count of Sebi's actions during a year crossing the 1,000-level mark.

This data for the fiscal 2012-13 is not yet available.

     
A major surge was witnessed during 2011-12 in the number of warnings issued by Sebi, to 951 from just 17 during the preceding year, while the number of prohibitive directions also rose from 268 to 487.

Meanwhile, Sebi took up 103 cases for investigation in April-December period of 2012, while it completed probe in 68 cases during this period. In the same period of 2011, Sebi had taken up 107 cases for investigations and had completed probe in 14 cases.