Sebi mulls its future role in evolving markets

Capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) last week held a brainstorming session, participating in which was its entire management, including its executive directors, whole time members and chairman, to discuss the agenda for the future.

The fifth edition of the Sebi brainstorming session, held on 6-8 April 2016 at Khopoli (Lonavala) in Maharashtra, was designed to meet three broad objectives of reflecting on and rediscovering Sebi's near, medium and long term agenda.

The Sebi session was also aimed at developing leadership and team building and generating ideas about scaling up profile and activities in the areas of capacity building and financial literacy in the organization, especially in the light of the upcoming new campus of National Institute of Securities Market (NISM).

Cross functional teams headed by chief general managers discussed the various areas of regulation, including in areas of:

• Cyber Security,
• Increasing the penetration of securities market,
• Revisiting regulatory framework to enable increased fund raising (both equity and debt) from securities market,
• Enhanced and effective monitoring of regulatory compliances.
• Ease of doing business for market intermediaries,
• Revisiting the framework for retail distribution, investment advice and curbing mis-selling.
• Conceptualising and creating relevant databases and analytics to improve the quality of analysis and decision making in Sebi
• SEBI communication strategy

The event also saw Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman, Aditya Birla Group, delivering an inspirational speech on leadership titled, 'A Transformational Journey', on 6 April.

On 7 April 2016, there was a panel discussion on `India Financial Services 2025 – Powered by Innovation' by an illustrious panel consisting of chairman of Union Bank of Colombo and ex-India country head of Morgan Stanley PJ Nayak, RBI deputy governor R Gandhi, executive vice chairman and managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank Uday Kotak, chairman of Manipal Global Education Mohandas Pai. The panel was moderated by Prof Atul Khosla, pro-vice chancellor Shoolini University, HP.

To make the exercise more inclusive, new ideas contests for junior and senior employees respectively were also conducted in the run up to the event. The event also witnessed several interesting group and team building activities to enhance camaraderie among the participating officials.

While Sebi has undertaken various developmental and regulatory initiatives in the Indian securities market in the recent years, the dynamics of financial markets throw new challenges every day. In this context, Sebi needs to regularly reflect, innovate and generate of new ideas to enhance organisational capabilities, a Sebi release pointed out.

Besides, Sebi has taken a number of steps in the recent years such as engaging an external consultant to suggest on organisational restructuring, constitution of Sebi's International Advisory Board and an annual brainstorming exercise.