Full transcript: SEBI chief Tuhin Kanta Pandey's address at Moneycontrol Global Wealth Summit 2025

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here today amongst this August gathering to share my views in this Global Wealth Summit organized by Moneycontrol and CNBC.

Our aspiration for a Viksit Bharat, a developed India by the year 2047, inspires us to march forward resolutely propelled by three Ds, democracy, demography and demand. India has exhibited resilience as well as strong growth momentum over the years. As we face global headwinds in terms of geoeconomic fragmentation, tariff issues and elevated uncertainties, we need to build upon our resilience and strength to sustain our growth.

A high level of sustained growth, low current account deficit, low external public debt, healthy bank balance sheets, fiscal consolidation roadmap, continuing government push on government capex and infrastructure and forex reserve buffer are some key pillars of support for India's resilience against exogenous shocks.

As per IMF estimates, overall economic growth in emerging markets and developing economies is projected at 4.2% in 2025, while India is estimated to grow at 6.5% in FY24-25, indicating a strong growth outlook for the country among the peers. Indeed, many forecast envisage that India will have a sustained growth of 6.5% at least till the end of the decade, although we would like to accelerate it much faster in order to achieve the Viksit Bharat goal.

In her budget speech on 1 February 2025, Honourable Finance Minister has outlined government's vision, strategy and action plan, focusing on four engines – agriculture, MSME, investment and exports. She also underlined major reforms in six domains – taxation, power sector, urban development, mining, financial sector and regulatory reforms.

Let me just now come to the role of the security markets in economic growth. We are all aware over the years Indian securities market has played a crucial role in generalising savings into the productive investments, thereby fuelling economic growth. Indeed, raising the savings and investment ratio has been one of the very important goals in the economic planning that we have. It has always provided a platform for businesses to raise capital efficiently, through equity and debt markets, reducing pressure on traditional banking channels. And it has facilitated corporate expansion, promoted entrepreneurship and contributed to overall economic development in the country.

Let’s see some data points. As of March 2020, there were 49 million unique investors in the SEBI ecosystem, which is now 136 million. Investors in mutual funds have risen 2.4 times in five years to 53 million from 22 million. Inflows into risk-oriented mutual funds during current year, which is April-March till January, are of the order of 5.3 trillion rupees. Over the last 10 years, Indian companies have raised on an average 2.2 trillion rupees per year through equity issuance in the securities market. The current fiscal year so far, April-Jan, has seen a record equity issuance of 4 trillion rupees, twice the capital raising of 2 trillion rupees witnessed in the entire previous year, FY23-24.

These are some of the key points, I think there are many. This access to funding through the capital market drives expansion, enhances productivity, fosters innovation, all of which contributed to economic growth. We need long-term capital through both equity and debt issuances as a source of stable funding, fostering sustainable economic growth.

And new products like REITs, INVITs, and municipal bonds have huge potential to boost infrastructure development in the country. These products not only provide a diversified source of funding, but also reduce reliance on traditional sources of capital.

Let me just come to some of the role that SEBI is playing. Of course, in case of regulations, SEBI has provided the regulatory structure for REITs, INVITs, and municipal bonds, some of the new innovations. Over the years, SEBI has taken measures to promote developments of the securities market, which is actually one of our mandates, reduce risk in the system through effective regulation and protect the interest of the investors and underline protecting the interest of the investors. Broadly, the reforms are aimed at enhancing efficiency, transparency, and robustness of the security markets. And we have used technology in a big way, entire marketing infrastructure, securities market infrastructure, we have been bringing in technology and to facilitate things which we earlier couldn't even imagine. Bold reforms need not be big bang. Many a time, small reforms cumulatively are more effective. Going forward, SEBI will use a right mix to both to achieve the objective.

Indian capital market has witnessed a surge in individual and domestic institutional investor participation. Ease of investing through digital platforms have significantly boosted retail investor engagement. You saw one live demonstration by Mr. Vaidyanathan. I think there is enormous work which has been done by the industry in bringing in these apps which can facilitate so easily making of investments. But then I think it also adds a lot of responsibility on us as well as the market players.

Now, increasing participation by domestic institutional investors, including mutual funds and pension funds, has resulted in greater domestic ownership and made Indian markets more resilient. You may have noticed there has been FBIs out there because FBIs may react to global events and come in and out. Nevertheless, I think domestic institutional investors have stably filled up the gap in many ways. Not to say that FBIs are not important and I will come to a little later of what we need to do with respect of FBI flows.

To foster financial inclusion and provide access to security market products and services to wider sections of the society, we are committed to facilitate market innovations and development of new products and processes, low value mutual fund SIP, small and medium REITs, which we call SM REITs, and specialised investment funds, SIFs, are testimony to the same.

As we intend to grow in the speed that we are aspiring, we need to have both domestic and foreign capital to support the growth momentum. With strong economic fundamentals and favourable demographics, India is a bright spot for long term investments. The country has attracted global investments across equities, debt and private equity spaces over the years. The presence of such long term foreign capital would further support infrastructure growth, innovation and entrepreneurship in India.

We at SEBI are conscious about the need to create conducive environment to attract foreign capital. We will be happy to engage with FBI and AIF industry participants to address their difficulties and further rationalise regulations to promote ease of operation.

Trust and transparency are the pillars of a healthy capital market. For sustainable capital market growth, maintaining trust and transparency in the financial ecosystem is paramount. A well regulated market instils confidence among investors, ensuring fair and efficient capital allocation. Regulatory bodies, market participants and corporates must uphold the highest standards of governance, disclosures and ethical practices. Enhanced transparency in regulatory action, corporate reporting and market operations will further strengthen the trust of both domestic and global investors in India's financial markets.

The trust and transparency extends to SEBI itself. We need to not only create trust of all stakeholders in us, but we also need to maintain that trust. And to that extent, I think we need to be more transparent, including on various other measures, including for example on the conflict of interest of the board and so on. And we will be coming forward with our own plan to further transparently reveal this conflict of interest etc. to the public.

Ease of doing business in capital market is applicable in all the three touch points. Point of entry, point of transacting and point of exit. Capital market is a dynamic space, so change is imminent, but we will certainly not be looking for maximum regulation, but for optimum regulation. If some statutes are redundant and outdated over the years and not serving any purpose, we are happy to review the same and change them. We are open to ideas on this. Laws and regulations are better enforced through voluntary compliance.

I am looking forward to engage with all stakeholders to discuss what more measures need to be taken to encourage voluntary compliance. I mentioned when I joined Fortis, trust and transparency, teamwork and technology. And when I say teamwork, teamwork includes the teamwork within SEBI, it also includes teamwork with various participants, investor bodies, the market participants, the market infrastructure institutions. And together we can actually create a further conducive ecosystem. We have come this far. We have to think of next 25 years. We have to think of how 2047 will look like, how we can move together.

We have to bring in technology. As I said, technology is always a changing thing. Use the technology to do things better, to be more transparent and give the integrity to the market institution of an order which we should be all proud of. But for that we need teamwork. We need everyone to come together to do that. So teamwork is more than what is inside, it's also outside, SEBI plus others. Same is true with technology.

The market is not a straight path in order to ensure that investors are not lost in labyrinth. Investor awareness and education is very crucial. An informed investor is self-protected. SEBI's effort in the days ahead is to create awareness among both existing and prospective investors. The question is, how do we create awareness? And that is where we need to explore different models of creating awareness across this big country. As I said, we may have 400 million pan-linked Aadhaar accounts. We are still there talking about 135 million accounts who are trading. Very slowly we will ramp up to that number. And accordingly we must also plan that how the people are also aware of the risks, how the people are able to do the wealth management in a manner which suits them, how they allocate their own capital portfolio which also de-risks them when they have to, and take whatever necessary in terms of allocation between the debt and the equity in a manner which suits them.

As Charles Dickens said in A Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of the times and it was the worst of the times. There will be difficulties, ups and downs, but India's economic and capital market growth is a strong trajectory, backed by policy support, structural reforms and rising investor participation. With a thriving securities market playing a pivotal role in economic acceleration, India is well positioned to remain a global investment hub and a key driver of the 21st century economy.

Thank you for attention. Jai Hind.