Sebi urges bourses to communicate in local languages

The Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chairman C B Bhave today advised stock exchanges to communicate with the investors through local language to attract investors to the stock market.

"Help in growing the equity culture in the area in people's language. Most of our communication tends to be English. We need to get all of this communication done in the local language without which we are losing huge audience," he said at a function here.

He said the stock exchanges'  focus should be on investor's education and the spread of financial literacy in the respective region.

"We need to educate our investors and we need to tell them really what the risks are in the business. We should also educate them what risks they are protected against and what risks they take themselves."

"It is very important they get this communication across so that we get an informed investor into the market," he said, inaugurating the strategic partnership between Madras Stock Exchange (MSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) to facilitate members of the former to trade on both cash and derivatives segments on NSE's platform.    

Bhave also said  Sebi would be happy to extend any help to the stock exchanges in their efforts to educate investors.

In order to end delay in refunds from companies when the investors were not alloted shares, Bhave said Sebi was considering automation of the system where the investor's money would not be taken away from his account till he knew how many shares he was going to be alloted.  

"We are trying to promote a mechanism whereby the investors money is not taken away from his account till he is told as to how many shares are going to be allotted to him. Only to the extent that shares are being allotted, the money will be taken from his account, so that the question of refund does not arise at all," Bhave said.   

"We require lot of automation by the banks to implement this process," he said.