Pending Investor Complaints Fall Below 10,000 Level: Sebi

Sebi's online complaint redressal mechanism for capital market investors helped bring down the number of pending grievances during last fiscal to below 10,000 level for the first time in five years.

According to latest data compiled by Sebi, the cumulative number of pending investor grievances against market entities at the end of March 2014 stood at 9,147 as against 11,410 grievances a year ago.

Pending complaints had stood at 49,113 at the end of 2008-09, and declined to 37,880 at the end of fiscal 2009-10.

The numbers fell further to 28,653 in 2010-11 and to 23,725 in 2011-12.

The data for pending grievances excludes complaints against whom regulatory actions have been initiated and also does not include complaints received by Sebi in the matter of Sahara OFCDs.

Faster resolution of grievances through implementation of Sebi's web-based investor complaint redressal system, SCORES, in June 2011, has helped bring down the number of pending complaints significantly.

Besides, the capital market regulator received 33,550 investor complaints against market entities last fiscal -- lowest since 32,335 complaints recorded by it in 2009-10.

At the same time, it had resolved 35,299 grievances in the last fiscal.

"SCORES enables the investor to directly lodge the complaints online and such complaints are considered as e-complaints," Sebi said.

"During 2013-14, a total of 18,811 e-complaints were received compared to 26,195 received during the previous year," the market regulator added.

SCORES provides a centralised database of all complaints, online movement of complaints to the concerned listed companies and online upload of Action Taken Reports (ATRs) by the concerned companies.

It also helps investors view, track and follow up the actions taken on their grievance.