Reached out to more than 2,000 FPIs through our outreach cell, says SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey

The regulations were proposed in May 2023, and the essence of it was that, if there was suspicious activity detected in the market, the onus was on the individual or entity to prove their innocence.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) reached out to more than 2,000 foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) as part of its outreach initiative to engage with the foreign investors and address issues they might have, said SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey, in an exclusive interaction with Moneycontrol.

“There's an FPI outreach, which has reached out to over 2,000 FPIs for trying to engage with them, explain them what has been going on, and also address some of the issues they might have,” said Pandey.

“The common application form of registration, the number of issues relating to that have been streamlined. The registration process of the average is now about less than 30 days. It used to be, at some point, much higher. All 200 cases which were pending for more than four months, now there's no pendency of such cases at all. So, all of them have been cleared,” added Pandey.

The SEBI chairman also highlighted the fact that the engagement process has been quite effective and participants have welcomed it in terms of dialogue and discussion.

“And I think it's a good learning process for us also. There's a number of steps, which SEBI has taken in case of FPIs,” said Pandey, who took charge as SEBI chairman on March 1.

Another important outcome of the outreach cell, according to Pandey, has been the fact that the registration process has become much faster and also some of the issues that they had they have been tackled.

Incidentally, Pandey recently returned from the US after meeting many foreign investors while attending a conference of global market regulators under the aegis of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

The 1987 batch IAS officer of the Odisha cadre said that one of the key takeaways from his recent trip was that FPIs particularly big banks even though they were not really participating in banking operations here, they were heavily invested in the Indian talent pool.

“Somebody having a 20,000 manpower in India, 40,000 manpower in India, and running global operations, bringing in even very high positions into India, in terms of managing from the globe. So, now that itself also creates a whole lot of other opportunities when you have such comfort level, whether you are running your global operations from Chennai or Pune or, you know, Mumbai or, and even, you know, increasingly in the tier two cities,” explained Pandey.