SEBI Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch Outlines Regulatory Focus on IPO Efficiency and Compliance Ease

SEBI Focussed On Expediting IPO Applications, Ensuring Ease Of Compliance Reporting: Madhabi Puri Buch

SEBI has also taken various measures to facilitate the ease of compliance and reporting by listed entities, which includes converting many reports to XBRL Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is focussed on accelerating the approval of applications for the companies in the fintech industry that are looking to get listed on the public market, said chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch. Speaking during the Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2024 today (August 29), Buch said, "If the fintech industry has reached a certain level of maturity and now they [companies] want to IPO, the private equity investors want to exit, the markets are good, this is the time when we should not be wasting time in getting approvals." She added that to ensure the IPO processes of these companies are streamlined, SEBI has been meticulously tracking the overall ageing and pendency of the IPO applications since March 2022. Over the last 12 quarters, the total number of IPO papers pending has dramatically declined. Largely, the latest pending IPO applications have "either a judicial intervention or there is a regulatory approval pending from another fellow regulator", Buch said. Meanwhile, stressing once again on the technology adoption by the SEBI, Buch said that currently almost a dozen projects using AI are in the works. "Half of those (the projects), roughly speaking, are ones which will speed up our approval process, and half of them, roughly, are the ones that will speed up our supervision process," she said, adding that by actively using AI, SEBI would also be able to bring down the ageing of the pending IPO applications further. The chairperson said in another conference earlier this month that the market regulator has started leveraging the power of AI for the processing of IPO documents. Buch, who made her first public appearance since US-based short seller Hindenburg's report alleging her of holding stake in offshore funds linked to the alleged Adani "scandal", emphasised the need for adhering to the compliance requirements as well. "The role of the regulator, of regulations, the role of compliance, is really to give protection to the consumer, or to the investor, in the case of markets. Equally on the business side, regulations and compliance are important because they foster trust in the system," said Buch. She further said that compliance should become a "low hum in the background" of every organisation. "This is our ultimate objective in SEBI... that for every entity that we regulate, compliance should simply be a low hum which goes on in the background," Buch said. "The real capability of our entrepreneurs, our industrialists, our entire economy, is really focussed on growing the country and delivering services to its citizens. Compliance should just become this low hum in the background," she added.

Compliance should become a low hum in the background, says Sebi chief

Sebi chief Madhabi Puri Buch described compliance as a background hum, aiming for it to be seamless so entities can focus on national growth and citizen services. In her Global Fintech Fest 2024 keynote, she emphasized the need for regulatory standards to foster innovation and reduce integration costs in fintech.Likening compliance to a low hum which plays in the background, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) Chief Madhabi Puri Buch on Thursday said it was the regulator's objective to achieve this so that the entities it regulated focused on delivering the services to the citizens and helped in the growth of the country "The ultimate objective in SEBI is that for every entity that we regulate, compliance should simply be a low hum which goes on in the background, just like we breathe. The real capability of our entrepreneurs, industrialists and our entire economy is really focused on growing the country and growing and delivering services to its citizens," Buch said in her keynote address at the Global Fintech Fest 2024. It was her first public appearance since the Hindenburg saga earlier this month, where the US short seller alleged that "the current SEBI Chairperson and her husband, Dhaval Buch, had hidden stakes in the exact same obscure offshore Bermuda and Mauritius funds, found in the same complex nested structure, used by Vinod Adani". She also underlined the role of regulators in the fintech world to create standards that could promote innovation. "One other important role for us as regulators in the fintech world in encouraging innovation has been the creation of standards. We have a market ecosystem that has a lot of infrastructure, each different from the other. If there is no standardisation, then the cost of innovation or the cost of new fintech to come into our market system and integrate with this market infrastructure is very significant," she said She further added, "The principle that we as regulators follow is actually very simple. If you are doing something that enhances the well-being of the consumer, nine out of ten times, the regulators will say yes, and when the innovation treads the line where the consumer, or in our case the investor is being short changed or has a lack of concern about what is happening to the investors to those nine out of ten times the regulator will say no." Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2024 is presented by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ministry of External Affairs, Department of Financial Services (DFS), Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA). The conference is jointly organised by the Payments Council of India (PCI), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), and the Fintech Convergence Council (FCC). The theme of this year's conference is 'Blueprint for the Next Decade of Finance: Responsible AI | Inclusive | Resilient'. (Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

Regulator approves consumer-friendly innovations, rejections based on concerns of investor money: SEBI Chairperson

Speaking at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai on Thursday, SEBI Chairperson said that compliance not only benefits consumers but businesses too. "The role of regulation and the regulator is to really give protection to the consumer or to the investor in case of markets. Equally, on the business side, regulation and compliance are important because they foster trust in the system," said Buch. The SEBI Chairperson highlighed the pivotal role that fintech plays in enhancing the ease of doing business. Asked on how regulators give approvals to an innovator who approaches it, Buch stated that if the innovation is in any way helping the consumers, the regulators always react positively and grant the approval. "The principle that we as a regulator follow is actually very simple: if you are doing something which is enhancing the well-being of the consumer, nine out of 10 times the regulator will say yes. They may put some compliances of reporting to monitor, but nine times they will say yes," said SEBI Chairperson. Buch also noted that if there is a lack of concern by the innovator about what is actually happening to the investors' money, in those cases, with reasonable probability, one can assume that nine times out of 10, the regulator will say no. SEBI is also working on marking a standardized format for all the platforms, including the BSE, NSE, or MCX, in terms of file formats to reduce the integration cost of companies into the market. The SEBI Chairperson highlighted that doing this will reduce the cost and time for the innovators or the players in the market. "We are working very hard to make sure that standardization happens in the market ecosystem to encourage low-cost innovation in terms of fintech. Whether you are talking to CDSL or NSDL, it should be the same API structure so your cost of innovation comes down," added Buch. On making the regulatory framework easy and reducing time in the stock market, Buch also highlighted that SEBI is now using Artificial Intelligence to speed up the process. She said, "Half of our AI products will speed up our process and half of them our supervision process." She also added that in the latest F&O's recent consultation paper by SEBI, opinions of about 6,000 people were received. "We are able to do this in a better way only because of the technology of processing a large number of feedbacks. The aim is to make compliance easier with the help of technology," Buch said. (ANI)