We’re for ensuring clean, safe markets: SEBI chief

SEBI Chairman Ajay Tyagi on Tuesday said the overall vision for the market regulator is to have bigger, cleaner and safer markets.

“SEBI is committed to facilitate further growth of markets. SEBI is equally committed to ensure clean and safe markets. We are duty-bound to ensure that the market mechanism is not misused or manipulated by unscrupulous elements. It is but natural to keep focus on safety issues, including systemic risks,” Tyagi said while speaking at the FICCI 15th capital market conference in Mumbai today.

Tyagi said in furthering market-based financing, the corporate bond market has to play an increasingly important role.

“Further development of a liquid corporate bond market through trading of securitised receipts, increased participation of domestic institutional investors and other relevant policy and operational measures will continue to engage the attention of SEBI, going forward,” he said.

Productive financial assets

Tyagi said the increasing role of Indian securities market hinges upon a transformational change in the current allocation of household savings between physical and financial assets. “There is a need to channelise more and more savings to productive financial assets. Policy refinements for enhancing geographical spread of securities market in India will continue. Apart from enhancing investor awareness and improving access to securities market, technology solutions will be explored to achieve the objective of scaling up of delivery channels in the market,” he said.

“Continued investor confidence is a crucial factor in attracting more investors to the securities market. Right governance framework and a transparent and clean market go a long way in meeting these expectations of investors at large. SEBI will continue to focus on further enhancing the overall governance standards in the market, be it for issuers, intermediaries or market infrastructure providers,” the SEBI chief said.

As far as economic risks are concerned, Tyagi highlighted that increase in international oil prices, tighter global financial conditions, spillover risks from a global trade conflict, and rising regional geopolitical tensions are some of the potential risks.

Speaking about the use of technology in providing security, Tyagi said, “With increasing amount of financial transactions, all of us are faced with volumes of data to deal with. The surveillance system of SEBI already has an embedded data warehouse and business intelligence system.

“Presently, SEBI is focused on fenhancing its in-house analytics capacity further to make better use of data analytics for its supervision function. SEBI has recently invited expression of interest from companies for enhancement of analytical capabilities and setting up of private cloud to provide infrastructure, storage and computing capacity to different upcoming projects of SEBI.”