SEBI and investor protection

What SEBI regulates and what it does not, how to verify a broker or adviser, the Investor Protection Fund, and the grievance clock with deadlines.

Most investment fraud in India is not hidden work. It is an ordinary-looking app, a friendly person on a call, and a document that looks official. Regulation cannot stop every one of those. What regulation does is give you a way to check, and that check takes about two minutes.

This chapter is about the check: what SEBI actually covers, how to verify the person or firm asking for your money, where your securities and cash actually sit, what compensation exists if a broker fails, and what happens when you complain.

This is an educational overview, not financial or legal advice. Registration status, compensation limits and complaint timelines are checked against the sources named here and are dated. Exchange-level limits in particular are revised periodically, so confirm the current figure on the exchange’s own page before relying on it.

What SEBI is, in its own words

SEBI was constituted on 12 April 1988 as a non-statutory body, through a resolution of the Government of India. It acquired statutory status and powers under the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 (No. 15 of 1992), dated 4 April 1992 and deemed to have come into force on 30 January 1992.

The Act’s own long title states the purpose, and the precision of the wording matters more than it first appears:

an Act to provide for the establishment of a Board to protect the interests of investors in securities and to promote the development of, and to regulate the securities market and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto

Read the two bold phrases carefully. SEBI’s object is investors in securities and the securities market. That is narrower than “financial markets”, and the boundary is worth knowing before you decide who to complain to.

What SEBI regulates, and what it does not

Mutual fund distributors are a category of their own, and the table above deliberately leaves them out of that last row. A distributor of mutual fund units is generally registered through the AMFI Registration Number (ARN) framework, not through SEBI’s register of intermediaries. An individual distributor obtains a NISM certification and registers with AMFI for an ARN and an Employee Unique Identification Number; a non-individual distributor registers with AMFI and must have at least one NISM-certified, EUIN-holding sales person. AMFI’s master circular for mutual fund distributors sets the code of conduct and the renewal requirements.

The point is not that distributors are unregulated. It is that an ARN is not a SEBI investment-adviser or portfolio-manager registration, and the two are not interchangeable:

• A distributor’s authorisation is to distribute mutual fund units. It is not authority to give personalised investment advice on a paid basis, and it is not authority to manage a portfolio on a discretionary basis.
• A SEBI-registered investment adviser advises, within the permissions that registration carries, and must meet the adviser-specific obligations.
• A SEBI-registered portfolio manager manages, within that authorisation.

Registration or authorisation in one capacity does not confer permission to undertake another. So when you check someone, check which category they hold, and check that the services being offered sit inside it, rather than treating “registered” or “ARN-holder” as one general-purpose credential.

Crypto assets are not under SEBI. SEBI has stated it has no regulatory mandate over virtual digital assets or the exchanges trading them, and it has warned the public about entities offering such products. That is why a crypto platform can look entirely legitimate and still sit outside the protection framework in this chapter. The distinction between a registered VDA service provider and an unregulated platform is covered in the crypto market lesson.

A firm being registered does not mean every activity it offers is authorised. This is the single most-missed point on the page. Registration is granted in specific capacities, and a company registered in one capacity has not thereby been authorised to do everything. A mutual fund distributor registered to sell fund units is not thereby a portfolio manager. Check the registration category on the register, not merely whether a registration exists.

What SEBI does

• Registers stock exchanges, clearing corporations, depositories and a long list of intermediaries, and publishes a searchable public register of them.
• Makes regulations setting the rules those entities operate under.
• Supervises and inspects, including through inspections of registered intermediaries.
• Adjudicates and penalises, through its own adjudication process and through prosecution referrals, for fraudulent and unfair practice, insider trading and non-compliance.
• Requires investor charter compliance. SEBI’s Investor Charter (Amendment) Regulations, 2025, notified on 10 February 2025, amended seventeen separate regulations so that stock brokers, merchant bankers, registrars to an issue and share transfer agents, debenture trustees, custodians, mutual funds, depository participants, portfolio managers, investment advisers, research analysts, KYC registration agencies, alternative investment funds, REIT and InvIT managers, designated FPIs depositories and vault managers must each publish and follow an investor charter.

Check before you trust

This is the highest-value habit in the whole course.

1. Is the broker registered?

Look them up on SEBI’s public register of recognised intermediaries. The register is the authority. An app, a contract note, a website or a WhatsApp message is a claim, not a record.

In practice a stock broker’s SEBI registration number begins INZ, and a depository participant’s begins IN-DP. Those prefixes tell you which register entry to open, but the register itself decides. Registration matters for one reason, in the charter’s own phrasing: it allows recourse to regulatory action against the firm if something goes wrong.

2. Is the platform an exchange?

For a listed contract traded in India, the trade should sit on a registered exchange, and not on an app’s internal ledger that merely displays prices. An internal ledger can show you a plausible screen and still not be a market. See stock exchanges.

The functions are separate, and it helps to keep them so:

A clearing corporation is not an alternative venue for placing an ordinary order. An earlier version of this page offered “a registered exchange (or a registered clearing corporation’s platform)” as if the two were interchangeable, and they are not. The clearing corporation clears and settles what the exchange matched; it is not the place a retail order is executed.

This is the distinction that makes a fraudulent platform worth checking carefully: it can display live-looking market prices while recording fictitious trades internally, because there is no exchange matching anything. The check is to confirm execution against the exchange’s own trade verification facility, which lets you see whether the trade exists on the exchange’s record rather than only in the app, and to deal only with a registered broker whose trades the exchange will have.

3. Who is managing the money, and in what capacity?

An investment adviser advises. A portfolio manager manages on a discretionary basis. A mutual fund distributor sells fund units. These are distinct registrations with distinct obligations.

Two things to avoid. A registration in one capacity does not cover another. And anyone managing your money for a fee is the case where the registration check matters most, because advice you pay for is the case where a bad actor has already earned your trust.

4. Does anyone promise returns?

The old version of this chapter said that no legitimate product offers guaranteed returns. That is too broad, and it is worth correcting properly rather than repeating.

Guaranteed returns versus market risk

Not every fixed payment is a guaranteed investment return. Sovereign Gold Bonds, for example, pay a fixed rate of interest on their nominal value, 2.50% a year paid half-yearly on RBI’s published terms, but their redemption value depends on the price of gold. Target-maturity debt funds seek to reduce certain risks by investing in securities with maturities aligned to the fund’s target date, but their returns are not guaranteed, and they remain exposed to market, credit and liquidity risks.

A promise of unusually high or guaranteed returns from market-linked investments should therefore be treated with caution. Check exactly what is guaranteed, who is responsible for paying it, and which risks the investor continues to bear.

There is a structural reason behind this, though it is a weaker claim than this page used to make. A market-linked return cannot be contractually guaranteed by the product itself without something else carrying the risk. What that “something else” is can take several forms: a smaller real risk than the marketing implies, a guarantee from a separate institution whose credit you are then relying on, or a payoff supported by hedging or other financial arrangements. It does not follow that a guarantee is impossible, or that there are exactly three kinds of legitimate guaranteed product, and an earlier version of this page said both. Treat those as possible explanations to look for, not as a closed list.

The useful discipline is not a category but a set of questions:

• What exactly is guaranteed? Principal, income, or both?
• Who provides the guarantee? The product, the issuer, an insurer, or a third party?
• Can that guarantor meet it? A guarantee is only as good as the balance sheet behind it.
• Does it apply at maturity only, or throughout?
• Does any market-linked component stay variable even where a fixed part is promised?
• What conditions and exclusions attach, and who decides whether they are met?

A contractual guarantee is not the same as an investment being free from risk. It shifts which risk you carry, and moves it from “the market may fall” to “the guarantor may not pay”. Those are different risks, not the absence of risk. Sovereign Gold Bonds are the clean illustration already on this page: a fixed 2.50% a year interest component, and a redemption value that moves with gold.

A corporate bond can contractually promise a fixed coupon and the repayment of principal, and that promise can still be broken by the issuer. Government securities carry different credit-risk characteristics from corporate debt, but their market prices still move with interest rates. Fixed return, guaranteed repayment, capital protection and risk-free investment are four different claims, and copy that slides between them is telling you the risk has been moved rather than removed.

That is also why “guaranteed returns” on a market-linked product is not automatically a fraud signal in itself, but is always a signal that something has been handed to you whose risk is hidden rather than gone. The practical warning stands and is narrower than a blanket rule: unusually high, assured or guaranteed market-linked returns advertised through social media, messaging groups or unauthorised intermediaries deserve careful scrutiny. That is a statement about the channel and the claim, not a claim that every legitimate fixed-return product is fraudulent.

5. How is the money moving?

These are not opinions. They come from SEBI’s investor charter guidance, and they describe how payments are laundered into fraud:

• Make payments only to the registered intermediary, through the banking channel. The charter is explicit that no payment should be made in the name of an employee of the intermediary.
• Do not transfer funds or securities, for the purposes of trading, to anyone other than a registered stock broker or depository participant.
• Do not transfer securities to your broker for margin. They should remain in your account and be pledged, not moved. Pledging grants the broker a charge to convert or sell if you default. Transferring hands over the holding itself, and you have given away the asset before the default happened.
• Keep your Delivery Instruction Slip (DIS) book safe, and never sign a blank or partially filled slip. The charter tells you to accept it only from your depository participant, pre-printed with a serial number and your client ID.
• Read a power of attorney before granting it, and specify which rights the broker may exercise and for how long they last. A demat PoA is not a formality.

6. Do the paperwork arrive when they should?

The charter states these as investor expectations, which makes them a fair thing to hold a firm to:

• Contract notes within 24 hours of your trades. Broker regulations phrase the same duty as “within one working day of execution”, so treat 24 hours as the charter’s expectation and the working day as the outer regulatory limit.
• A statement of account periodically, and at least once a quarter or month from the broker, with any discrepancies raised promptly.
• Pay-out of funds, securities or commodities received in your account within 1 working day of the pay-out date.
• A trade verification facility on the exchange’s website, which lets you confirm your trades against the exchange’s own record rather than only your broker’s.

The pay-out window has one important exception, and it is the one you may have signed. Where you have given specific authorisation for a running account settlement, the broker may not pay out funds or deliver securities within one working day of receiving the pay-out from the exchange; the account is instead settled on the cycle you chose, typically monthly or quarterly. This is a real and legitimate arrangement, not a default. It is also a reason to distinguish three different things that get run together: the settlement date in the exchange’s cycle, the broker’s own pay-out obligation to you, and a voluntary withdrawal you request. Only the first two are governed by the timelines above.

Two authorisation mechanisms deserve separate mention because they are not the same thing as a pay-out rule. A power of attorney, if you grant one, should be read before you sign it, with the rights it confers and their duration stated. A Delivery Instruction Slip should be accepted only from your depository participant, pre-printed with a serial number and your client ID, and never signed blank. The DDPI (Demat Debit and Pledge Instruction) is a newer alternative to PoA for debits and pledges; note that it is not a mandatory requirement under SEBI or exchange rules, so a firm presenting it as compulsory is describing its own preference as a rule.

The pattern SEBI has actually seen

The checks above are general. SEBI has also published, and republished, the specific scripts, because these are the shapes that recur rather than the ones an investor is likely to imagine.

SEBI has published these scripts repeatedly, because these are the shapes that recur rather than the ones an investor is likely to imagine. In a 2024 advisory it observed “a rising trend of unscrupulous entities and online platforms that falsely claim to be registered with SEBI as intermediaries”, showing “fake certificates purportedly issued by SEBI” and “promising or implying assured, high returns”.

The advisory this page can cite precisely is PR No. 22/2025, dated 11 April 2025, which extended the caution to social media platforms by name: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. It named these patterns:

A second advisory, PR No. 27/2025, in May 2025, added two details worth isolating. Scammers impersonate registered intermediaries and also well-known public figures, celebrities and chief executives, and they use fake testimonials of enormous profits from other group members who are in fact part of the scam. The group that appears to corroborate the returns is the group being run for you.

The “preferential deal” promises above are generally inconsistent with the rules rather than uniformly so, and the reason is worth stating with that qualification. The route an FPI uses to invest is unavailable to resident Indians save for limited exceptions set out in SEBI’s Foreign Portfolio Investors Regulations, 2019, which SEBI restated in August 2025. There are legitimate institutional and anchor-book routes that exist for eligible investors; what does not exist is a version of them being extended to you by strangers in a messaging group. That combination, an access route that is restricted for residents plus an informal channel offering it, is the tell.

On phone calls, there is a real and useful signal here, but it is narrower than it is often stated. TRAI has mandated adoption of the 1600 numbering series for BFSI-sector service and transactional voice calls, in consultation with the RBI, SEBI and PFRDA, and it is being phased by entity type rather than applied on one date. For SEBI-regulated entities the schedule runs in two steps: mutual funds and asset management companies by 15 February 2026, and Qualified Stockbrokers by 15 March 2026. Other SEBI-registered intermediaries may move to the series on a voluntary basis after verification, and the insurance sector’s deadline was still to be notified. The underlying reason is sound: an ordinary 10-digit mobile number is not a signal of anything, and unscrupulous entities using one are a known fraud risk.

Do not read a 1600-series number as proof of anything, and do not read the absence of one as proof of fraud. Not every legitimate intermediary is yet required to use the series, so the check is a useful positive signal rather than a test. A caller ID is not identity: a scammer can impersonate a registered intermediary through channels that have nothing to do with phone numbers at all. So:

• Open the intermediary’s official website yourself, by typing the address, rather than using a link you were sent.
• Check the registered contact details on SEBI’s own record for that entity.
• Call back on a number you verified independently before acting on anything said in the call.
• Never treat a number displayed on your screen as proof of who is calling.
• Never share passwords, OTPs, PINs or other authentication credentials. No legitimate intermediary needs them, on any number.

Where to check, specifically

Seven places, all but one run by SEBI, none of which require an account:

1. Is the firm registered, and in which category? sebi.gov.in/intermediaries.html, then Recognised Intermediaries

2. Has SEBI taken enforcement action against it? sebi.gov.in → Enforcement → Orders

3. Is this a genuine trading app? investor.sebi.gov.in/Investor-support.html

4. Where do I escalate a complaint? scores.sebi.gov.in for SCORES. Use this address, and not the discontinued scores.gov.in.

5. Where do I take an unresolved dispute? smartodr.in for SMART ODR.

6. Plain-language investor education material? investor.sebi.gov.in

7. What is the broker’s own investor charter, and what are its timelines? Ask the broker for it, and check it against SEBI’s Investor Charter for Stock Exchanges at investor.sebi.gov.in/Investor-charter.html. That page is where the exchange complaint timetable, the interim-payment provisions and the differences between exchanges on this page come from, and each exchange’s own charter is reproduced there.

The enforcement check is the one most people skip, and it is not the same as the registration check. A firm can be registered and still have been ordered against. SEBI has said so directly: “the details of any enforcement action taken by SEBI against any entity/intermediary is available on SEBI website”.

On the genuine app question, SEBI has been pressing app stores and social media platforms to verify that only registered entities may advertise investment products, and it has described a plan to introduce a distinct label in app stores for authentic regulated trading applications, so that a real broker’s app can be told apart from a lookalike. That labelling is a plan rather than a settled, universal state, so this page does not treat it as a check yet. What SEBI has since put on a firmer footing is disclosure on the platforms themselves: a February 2026 circular requires SEBI-regulated entities and their agents to disclose their registered name and registration number on social media when posting about the securities market, which gives you a specific thing to look for. Until a label is universal, the published app list remains the check to use rather than the app’s own claim about itself.

Where your securities and cash actually sit

The structural protection is separation, and it is the thing to understand before anything else on this page.

• Your securities are recorded in a demat account in your name, in the depository system, through a registered depository participant. Beneficial ownership is yours; the broker operates against that account rather than holding the holding. This is why “transfer, don’t pledge” in the list above is not pedantry.
• Your client funds are kept apart from the broker’s own money under the applicable broker and clearing framework, so that they are not available for the broker’s own trading or for other clients’ obligations.

Two qualifications belong with that, because the idea is often overstated in both directions.

“Segregated” describes a framework, not one bank account holding every rupee continuously. Money and securities move through the clearing and settlement process, and the segregation rules govern how client funds and client securities are held, identified and reconciled at each stage. It is a set of obligations about whose money is whose, not a static vault. What you can rely on is the record in your name and the reconciliation duties on the firm, which is what makes a shortfall detectable and claimable.

And segregation is not a guarantee against fraud, operational failure or a shortfall. It is a structural arrangement that makes those outcomes harder and more visible, and that supports a claim when they happen. That is a meaningful protection and it is not the same as a promise that nothing can go wrong, which is precisely why the Investor Protection Fund below exists as a backstop.

On margin specifically: where the applicable framework requires it, securities given as collateral should be pledged in the depository system, not transferred. A pledge creates a charge that the broker can enforce on default, while the securities stay in your account and remain identifiable as yours. An outright transfer moves beneficial ownership, which is a different thing entirely and much harder to unwind if the broker fails. An authorised pledge is not an outright transfer of beneficial ownership, and copy that treats the two as equivalent is describing the transfer as though it were the safer arrangement.

The guarantees around them come from different places, and it is worth being precise about who does what:

An earlier version of this page credited all of it to “SEBI regulation”. The rulemaker, the account holder and the settlement guarantor are different institutions, and knowing which is which tells you who to approach when something is missing.

On the broker and the depository participant, one common error is worth correcting. Stockbroking and depository-participant services are separately regulated functions, and the two activities carry their own registration and obligations. But the same legal entity is often registered for both. A large broking firm is commonly your stockbroker and your DP at once, under one company, holding two registrations. So:

• NSDL and CDSL are the depositories. They hold the securities record.
• Investors hold demat accounts through a registered Depository Participant, which is the entity you deal with.
• A stockbroker facilitates eligible transactions in those securities.
• One institution can do both, when registered appropriately for each.

The practical consequence is that “your DP is a different company from your broker” is not a safety property, and an earlier version of this page implied it was. The safety property is that your holding is recorded in your name in the depository system, through your demat account, so that the broker is operating against your account rather than holding the securities itself. That distinction survives whether the two functions sit in one company or two, and it is why “transfer, don’t pledge” in the list above is not pedantry.

If your broker defaults: the Investor Protection Fund

Exchanges maintain an Investor Protection Fund, administered through a registered trust. This is not insurance against losing money on a trade. It is a backstop for a narrow situation, and NSE describes its purpose precisely: compensating investors “in the event of defaulters’ assets not being sufficient to meet the admitted claims of investors”.

Three properties follow directly from that sentence, and they matter more than the headline number.

1. It is secondary, not primary. The defaulter’s own assets are applied to admitted claims first. The fund covers the shortfall, up to a cap.
2. The cap is set exchange by exchange, and it is not the same everywhere.
3. Some claims are excluded outright, including claims arising out of speculative transactions.

The limits differ by exchange

NSE’s trust is managed by trustees comprising public representatives, an investor association representative, board members and senior officials of the exchange. BSE states a different figure again, and this page does not print it because the exchange’s page does not publish the effective date alongside it. Read it from BSE directly if BSE is your exchange.

So a compensation figure quoted without naming the exchange is not usable. The number most often quoted online is NSE’s, and a reader holding an MCX-only account or an MSE account is looking at a very different ceiling. Note that each exchange’s limit is revised periodically and must be published, so even a named figure should be rechecked on the exchange’s own page.

Nothing here guarantees that an investor receives the ceiling. The maximum is what the fund may pay; what you actually receive depends on the admissibility of the claim, the assets recovered from the defaulter, the order in which claims rank and the applicable rules of that exchange’s trust. The ceiling is a limit, not an entitlement.

What the fund does not cover

The published claim policies exclude, among other things:

• Claims of the trading member itself or its associates.
• Claims arising out of speculative transactions.
• Claims for damages or harassment, interest on the amount claimed, and loss arising from delayed delivery of securities.

The speculative-transaction exclusion is the one to sit with. It means the Investor Protection Fund is not a hedge on your trading, and it reinforces the point in the reality of trading rather than softening it.

A separate statutory fund exists at SEBI level, the Investor Protection and Compensation Fund, operating under SEBI’s own rules and guidelines on its utilisation. Its payout limits are distinct from the exchange figures above, and the specific amounts are not reproduced here because they need to be read from SEBI’s current rules.

Raising a grievance

There are four mechanisms, run by four different kinds of body, on three different clocks. Treating them as one process is how people end up pursuing the wrong route against the wrong body, often past a deadline that still had time left on it.

The one genuine precondition is the first step. SEBI’s Master Circular for online dispute resolution, issued as SEBI/HO/OIAE/OIAE_IAD-1/P/CIR/2023/145 dated 11 August 2023 and reissued in consolidated form as SEBI/HO/OIAE/OIAE_IAD-3/P/CIR/2023/195, updated as on 28 December 2023 (paragraph 12), requires an investor to “first take up his/her/their grievance with the Market Participant”. That is a precondition for the later routes, and it is the reason the intermediary’s reference number matters.

SCORES is not a mandatory step on the way to ODR, however. This is the part most often stated wrongly, including in earlier versions of this page. SEBI’s own SCORES FAQ is explicit: a complainant “can approach the Online Dispute Resolution mechanism … or other appropriate civil remedies at any point of time”, and “in case the complainant opts for Online Dispute Resolution mechanism or other appropriate civil remedies while the complaint is pending on SCORES, the complaint shall be treated as disposed on SCORES.”

So the sequence below is a recommended escalation path, not a legally mandatory one. Two consequences follow, and they pull in opposite directions:

• You do not have to wait out SCORES before using ODR. If you start ODR while a SCORES complaint is open, expect the SCORES complaint to be closed, with the entity’s Action Taken Report recording that the matter is pending before SMART ODR. It is a transfer of venue, not a rejection of your complaint.
• You should still expect to complain to the intermediary first. That is the step SEBI actually requires, and a dispute that never went to the intermediary is the one most likely to be sent back.

There are limits in the other direction too. SCORES itself does not treat certain things as complaints at all, including sub judice matters and disputes already pending before the ODR mechanism under that master circular. And once a matter is with SMART ODR, it is on SMART ODR: SEBI’s FAQ notes that the ODR route is subject to the applicable procedures and, where the matter is one requiring adjudication of third-party rights or a question of law, the ordinary civil and consumer forums remain available as well.

The working-day versus calendar-day split is not pedantry. A fifteen working day window is about three calendar weeks.

1. Your intermediary

The broker or firm you dealt with is the first stop, and every later stage expects that you have started there. Keep the reference number they issue. A complaint arriving at SCORES or the ODR portal without the intermediary’s reference is the complaint most likely to be returned.

2. The exchange

An exchange handles a complaint lodged with it, moving from amicable resolution to a Grievance Redressal Committee, and then to arbitration if either party is aggrieved. SEBI’s Investor Charter reproduces the exchange timetable, and this is it:

Scope, because this timetable is not universal. These are the rows SEBI’s Investor Charter publishes under “Against Stock Brokers”, and at the time of writing BSE, NSE, NCDEX, MCX and MSEI each reproduce the same working-day figures for that route. That is a statement about the broker-complaint route for securities and commodity-derivative broker complaints, not a single timetable covering every market infrastructure institution, segment or dispute type. A complaint against a depository, a depository participant, a listed company or an asset management company follows that entity’s own mechanism: the depository charters, for instance, run their own resolution windows and their own four-month arbitration target. Read the applicable body’s current rule rather than assuming this table.

The columns here are working days, not calendar days, which is why the numbers are larger than they first look: the T+15 amicable-resolution window is roughly three calendar weeks.

This table is also not the whole of what SEBI publishes. It continues with a row for implementing the GRC order, then the arbitration and appellate stages, with completion targets of four months from the final appointment of the arbitrator and three months for appellate proceedings.

One figure in that continuation is not uniform, so we do not print it. The window to opt for arbitration after a GRC recommendation appears in the charters as three months for BSE and NSE and six months for NCDEX, MCX and MSEI. Your exchange’s own investor grievance page is the only authority for your deadline, and this is exactly the kind of figure to read off it rather than from a general article. The later arbitration and appellate deadlines were previously omitted from this page for the same reason: where official versions have differed, directing you to the applicable exchange’s current rules is more honest than choosing a number.

If the GRC decides in your favour and the broker then takes the matter to arbitration, the exchange’s Investor Protection Fund releases an interim payment of 50% of the award or ₹2 lakh, whichever is less, against your undertaking. Two conditions belong with that sentence and are easy to lose: it applies where the GRC order is up to ₹20 lakh, and it is an interim payment against the outcome, not a settlement. A second provision covers the case where arbitration is not filed within the window the exchange allows from the GRC order: the fund releases 50% of the amount to the investor, against an undertaking, and the exchange replenishes the 50% to the fund.

An earlier version of this page also printed a further release of “₹3 lakh or half the award” if the broker appealed. That figure could not be verified against the exchanges’ investor charters or against SEBI’s own charter, so it has been removed rather than left standing. What the published charters do provide for is the interim release above, and a separate 100% deposit obligation on a Market Participant that wants to challenge an award under the ODR framework described below. Read your exchange’s own current rule before relying on any interim figure.

These interim payments come out of the fund described earlier, and they are a partial payment, not a settlement. Note also that each exchange’s charter fixes its own number of months for opting into arbitration after a GRC recommendation: at the time of writing BSE and NSE publish three months from the date of the IGRC recommendation, while NCDEX, MCX and MSEI publish six. That is not a detail to carry across exchanges, and it is why this page prints the range rather than one figure.

3. SCORES

SEBI’s SCORES portal is at scores.sebi.gov.in. You file against a listed company, a registered intermediary or a market infrastructure institution, and you track the case there.

Its clock comes from circular SEBI/HO/OIAE/IGRD/CIR/P/2023/156, dated 20 September 2023, and it runs in calendar days. Each window starts from a different event, and the table says so, because the commonest misreading is that all four run from the day you filed:

Two things follow that are worth knowing.

The 21 days is a deadline for the entity to report, not a promise that your problem is fixed by then. The 2023 circular shortened it from 30 days. A filed Action Taken Report is the entity’s account of what it did, which is not the same as a resolution you accept.

A silent entity is escalated for you. SCORES 2.0 auto-routes the complaint to the entity and to a designated body, and the designated body can take cognizance on its own where the entity misses the 21-day window entirely. You do not have to do anything for that escalation to happen; you do have to opt in to a review if you are dissatisfied with a report that did arrive.

scores.gov.in no longer resolves, because the old SCORES platform was closed with effect from 28 March 2024. That address is still printed in older articles and on some visiting cards. Statuses of complaints lodged there before the closure can only be checked in the old system.

4. SMART ODR

The final route is the SMART ODR portal at smartodr.in, run jointly by the seven market infrastructure bodies. Its full name is the Securities Market Approach for Resolution through Online Dispute Resolution. It runs conciliation first, then online arbitration, and SEBI has mandated its use for entities with a largely direct retail interface.

The precondition is the complaint to the intermediary, and only that. You are not required to have exhausted SCORES first, for the reason set out above: SEBI’s FAQ lets an investor approach ODR at any point, and treats a SCORES complaint pending at that moment as disposed. What you do need is the prior complaint to the Market Participant.

Its clock runs in calendar days. Where the value of the claim or counter-claim is above ₹1 lakh, the sole arbitrator or tribunal holds one or more hearings and passes the award within 30 calendar days of appointment, and may extend that by a further 30 days at the arbitrator’s liberty. Where the claim or counter-claim is ₹1 lakh or below, the same 30-day award window applies but the process is document-only, and the additional 30-day extension is not the ordinary course. These figures come from the master circular, and it is the circular’s wording that decides their scope, not a general reading of “ODR”.

The deposit obligation is the Market Participant’s, not the investor’s. This is worth stating precisely because it is easy to reverse. Where the Market Participant is the party against whom arbitration is initiated, it must deposit 100% of the admissible claim value with the relevant MII within 10 days of the investor initiating the online arbitration, and pay the applicable fees. If the Market Participant is itself the one initiating, it must deposit before initiating. And if a Market Participant wants to challenge an award, it must deposit 100% of the amount payable under the award before the challenge. The common thread is that the deposit requirement falls on the regulated firm, and its purpose is to stop a firm using a challenge as a way of not paying.

Two thresholds decide who decides the dispute. An aggregate claim and counter-claim above ₹30 lakh goes to a tribunal of three arbitrators, appointed within 5 calendar days of the reference, and at or below it to a sole arbitrator. At or below ₹1 lakh, the sole arbitrator decides on documents alone.

One figure this page does not print is a “90-day” service target that is widely quoted for the portal. It appears in secondary descriptions rather than in the master circular’s operative deadlines, so treat the circular’s own windows above as the ones with a rule behind them, and read the current position on the portal itself.

What these deadlines are

Every clock above is a prescribed response deadline, not a guarantee that your complaint will be resolved by that date. They are what SEBI publishes as expected timelines, and SEBI’s own heading says “expected”. They oblige the body at that step to act or to report within the window. None of them promises an outcome in your favour, and none of them stops a broker or a member from missing one.

Keep the reference number from every stage, because each mechanism expects the earlier one’s record.

Your protection is limited, not absolute

Regulation gives you fair treatment and a redressal route. It gives you a demat account held separately from the broker, segregated client cash, a settlement guarantee delivered by the clearing corporation, and a complaint process with deadlines attached.

None of it stops you losing money on a trade. A regulated broker can still lose your money through leverage, and a regulated exchange can still host a losing trade. The compensation fund covers a defaulter’s shortfall on admitted claims, not the market being wrong about a price.

That difference is the whole reason the reality of trading exists, and it is why “is it regulated” is the first question about a firm but the last question about a strategy.

Before you part with money

1. Look the firm up on SEBI’s public register, and check the registration category, not just that a registration exists.
2. Search SEBI’s enforcement orders for that firm as well. Registered and ordered-against are different facts.
3. Confirm the trading app appears on SEBI’s list of authentic apps, not merely in the app store you found it in.
4. Confirm the platform is a registered exchange rather than an internal ledger showing prices.
5. Pay only to the registered entity, through banking channels. Never to an employee, never to a personal account, never to a third party.
6. Pledge, do not transfer, when securities are involved in margin.
7. Read any power of attorney and check which rights it grants and for how long.
8. Keep the DIS book under your control; sign nothing blank.
9. Chase the contract note within 24 hours and the pay-out within 1 working day if either is late.
10. Use the exchange’s trade verification to confirm trades against the exchange’s record, not only the broker’s app.
11. Know the compensation ceiling for your exchange, and know that speculative-trading claims are excluded from it.
12. Keep every reference number. The grievance clock only works if you can show where each stage stopped.

Sources and dates

The regulatory position is dated rather than standing, so each claim above is checked against a named document. The main ones:

Two things are deliberately absent. This page does not print a single arbitration opt-in window, because the charters disagree by exchange (three months for BSE and NSE, six for NCDEX, MCX and MSEI). And it does not print a “90-day” SMART ODR service figure, which is widely quoted but did not appear in the master circular’s operative deadlines when this was checked.

Where a figure is exchange-specific, treat the exchange’s own current page as authoritative over this one, and recheck it before relying on it.

Next: the reality of investing.