ANMI Asks SEBI To Classify Stock Broking As Essential Services Amid Lockdown

On Monday, the Association of National Exchanges Members of India (ANMI) asked markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to include brokers and depository participants as essential services and advise all state governments to issue a clarification in this regard.

On the other hand, the mutual fund (MF) industry has sought certain exemptions from SEBI pertaining to compliance requirements for order executions following government's work-from-home directive, meeting sectoral exposure norms in debt schemes amid liquidity crunch, and consider increasing borrowing limits as redemptions could spike amid Coronavirus scare.

Among other challenges, the industry is anticipating delays in publishing daily net asset values (NAVs) or dispatching physical cheques for redemption and dividend payments after 75 districts across all India were put on total lockdown in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.

While states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Rajasthan have issued a clarification to authorities to allow employees working in exchanges, broking offices, several state governments have not clarified it, creating confusion.

While some investors are asked SEBI to keep the markets closed, the brokers association said financial markets are integrated globally and, India is playing a major part standing among the top seven ranks globally in equity volumes.

Hence, equity and derivatives markets cannot be shut down while global exchanges or financial markets are active and working around the world.

SEBI and exchanges have permitted trading through terminals from various locations. This relaxation is taking care of front office staff of broking offices to work from home to 50 percent of potential, however, staff serving back offices or servers or operational dependencies cannot be operated be entirely working from home, ANMI said.

AMNI comprises of around 900 stockbrokers from across the country.