Sebi lowers broker fees by 25%; goes digital on all payments

To reduce overall cost of transactions, Sebi today decided to lower broker fees by 25 per cent to Rs 15 per transaction of Rs 1 crore as part of calibration of various other fees collected by the regulator from different market intermediaries.
The Sebi board has decided to give an option to all market intermediaries and companies to make their regulatory payments in digital mode. The move would help in speedy and easy transactions, while reducing failures due to payment gateway issues.
Besides, the board has approved a proposal to levy certain new charges, including filing fee for draft scheme of arrangements and processing fee on application for relaxation in certain regulations.

"Keeping this objective in mind and taking into consideration the projected income and expenditure of Sebi for the next three financial years, the board decided to reduce the fees payable by broker by 25 per cent from Rs 20 per crore of turnover to Rs 15 per crore of turnover," Sebi said in a statement after its board meeting.
It has been a long pending demand of broker and market participants.
"This will result in reduction of overall cost of transactions and will benefit the investors and promote the development of securities market," the regulator said.

The regulator has been following the practice of calibrating the fees either upwards or downwards as per its requirements so as to keep a balance between the financial resources required to ensure regulatory efficiency while maintaining reasonableness to avoid any undue burden on any particular class of intermediaries.

Further, it has decided to charge fee for application
under buyback regulations and impose a processing fee on an application for relaxation of strict enforcement of Sebi's ICDR (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) regulations. Currently, no fee is being charged for processing of such requests.
The board has revised upwards the fee charged under Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers (SAST) Regulations to Rs 5 lakhs from Rs 3 lakh.
Besides, the Board approved the proposal to amend various Regulations to enable the market participants to make payments to Sebi through digital mode as well. The move comes following the demonetisation of high-value currency by RBI in November.

Many of the intermediaries such as brokers, Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs), stock exchanges, custodians make payments to Sebi through online banking.
However, certain receipts such as filing fees for IPOs, takeover fees, payment from mutual funds are still received through cheques and demand drafts. Further, option of online payment from market intermediaries is not available in the respective regulations.