In crackdown on `finfluencers,' SEBI gets 15,000 contents taken down

In the past three months, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has taken down more than 15,000 ‘content sites’ by unregulated financial influencers as part of its efforts to protect investors, according to SEBI's whole-time director Kamlesh Varshney..

These finfluencer contents were pulled down by technological platforms on SEBI's instruction, he said. This was in line with SEBI'ss decision in July to restrain regulated entities from associating with finfluencers. 

Mr Varshney said SEBI was trying to ensure that investor education and regulation can seamlessly co-exist and was aware of the unregulated activity of unregistered finfluencers in the market.

Finfluencers misguiding investors

“They are misguiding investors and causing loss of money. We have been getting a lot of complaints from investors. Then we work with technological platforms where unregistered people give advice,” he said. “More than 15,000 content sites have been taken down by them in the last three months after we referred these to them.”

Mr Varshney said SEBI had asked the technology platforms to create a system to identify unregulated content, in addition to Sebi’s supervision.

SEBI relaxing norms for investment advisers 

Mr Varshney noted that SEBI had received more than 1,000 responses to its proposal to relax some of the restrictions on registered investment advisers (RIAs) and research analysts (RAs).

“We have a policy framework in mind and issued a consultation paper. We will take this up in the next board meeting,” he said. “The idea is to reduce entry barriers. We provide clarification on the grey area and what is to be done. This, along with investor education, will create many investment advisers in the future.” SEBI's board might approve the proposal in its meeting in September, he added.

                                                     (By arrangement with livemint.com)