FM slams 'unregulated' players in the financial market

Finance Minister P Chidambaram today slammed "unregulated" players in the financial market saying their activities have adversely impacted large number of consumers.

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The financial sector operates in a speed and dynamism, and generates new space, sometimes "undefined" areas, which provide opportunities for "unregulated" players in the market, he said at a seminar here.

"The existence of such (unregulated) players who operate in the twilight zone endanger the discipline of the markets leading to systemic instability. Invariably, such activities adversely impact a large number of consumers. This reduces their confidence in the system", Chidambaram said.

He was speaking at the National seminar on "Indian Financial Code" recommended by the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission, organised by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, here.

Observing that large number of investors, particularly smaller investors, stay away from the (financial) system he said, "it reduces the supply of blood to the body economic. A financial consumer is comfortable to participate in a regulated market."

However, exploiting the limitations of the regulatory architecture, "financial" engineers come up with innovative products outside the regulatory jurisdiction and "deprive" the consumers of such products of regulatory protection, he said.

"We believe that we must move quickly to remove all unregulated space. A recent attempt in this direction is the Ordinance that I referred to, which was first promulgated in July 18 this year and repromulgated in September 16, which considers any raising of resources by whatever means, if not regulated otherwise as a collective investment scheme", he said.

"Our endeavour is to eliminate unregulated space.", he said adding Indian government was focused on protection of financial consumers.