The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is conducting a nationwide survey to help increase investor participation and awareness about risk in the market, said the regulator’s whole-time member Ananth Narayan on Friday.
Speaking at ARIA (Association of Registered Investment Advisors) Aspire 2025 event, Narayan said, “We are conducting a nationwide survey, using a very large agency along with our market infrastructure institutions to gather insights into two key areas: The first question is, what does it take to get the 13 crore investors we have to increase even further? Is it a lack of awareness, access, or perhaps fear.”
“Secondly, those who are coming in, how risk aware are they? Do they even understand what risk is? Do they understand what volatility is? Do they understand what asset allocation is? Where are they getting the information from?” Narayan said.
Survey to be completed
The survey is expected to be completed by June or July 2025, which will be followed by a systematic investor outreach program. “The new chairperson has endorsed the need to go through this particular process. We will use the survey results to push across tailored messages and enhance both investor awareness and risk education,” he said.
Crackdown on social media
The regulator has also intensified its crackdown on social media handles misleading investors, taking down more than 70,000 such accounts during the past six months, he said. With domestic mutual funds inflow into equities near record levels—making curbs on unregistered advisors’ fraudulent activities SEBI’s high priority.
“A common worry for all of us is the menace of unregistered investment advisors/research analysts, who are cashing on the rising interest in investments,” Narayan said. He said that Sebi’s proposal to use UPI ‘Payright’ handle will help investors to easily identify registered entities and protect them from fraudsters.
Similarly, registered investment advisors (RIA) become very important to help SEBI spread risk awareness, need for diversification and asset allocation, he said. He also suggested continuing the dialogue between RIAs, and other stakeholders to review regulations and make it easier to increase the number of RIAs.
