The Hindu Business Line : Beware! SEBI can track you by your fingerprints

The Securities and Exchange Board of India is understood to be working on a system that enables fingerprint identification of all participants in the securities market to help trace the origin of irregularities arising in stock trading.

Sources in the know believe that SEBI may make fingerprint identification mandatory for all market participants. The fingerprints will be verified through the participants' use of computers or trading terminals.

Sources said this was not to be confused with a thumb-print identification, but that the prints of four fingers would be used to ascertain the identification of an individual.

This is part of the capital market regulator's effort to create an electronic system for proper identification of all market participants and to establish a transparent trading system.

SEBI is understood to have roped in National Securities Depositories Ltd (NSDL) to implement the system.

The market participants include brokers, sub-brokers, mutual funds, stock exchanges and depositories and investors. Employees of market intermediaries as well as those of stock exchanges and SEBI itself will also be subject to fingerprint identification.

SEBI is also working on a central database of market participants and investors called `Mapin.' This is actually the first phase of the electronic tracking process and will precede the fingerprint identification system. Under this, all the market participants including investors will be given an identification number. The database would contain comprehensive information about market participants. This would be available for view by the investing public.

According to a discussion paper prepared by SEBI, any person who desires to operate in the securities market in any capacity should be required to get registered with Mapin.

According to SEBI, "analyses of various market misconducts reveal that the lack of proper identity of persons operating in the market is a constraint in making an audit trail, and regulators have great difficulty in trying the real beneficiaries of irregularities."

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Beware! SEBI can track you by your fingerprints