Sebi simplifies registration of certain FPI categories

To ease onboarding for FPIs and reduce duplication of information, Sebi on Tuesday proposed an abridged version of Common Application Form (CAF) that only requires information unique to the applicant.

Further, the rest of the information will be auto-filled from the depository's records or certain fields will be disabled if not needed.

Also, the applicants will need to confirm that the previously provided information remains unchanged, Sebi proposed in its consultation paper.

The regulator observed that in case of certain categories of Foreign Portfolio Investor (FPI) applicants like multiple funds under an Investment Manager (IM), sub-funds of a master fund, or schemes of insurance companies, much of their relevant information is already captured in depositories' CAF module, which can be leveraged without seeking the same from said applicants.
Further, there are certain fields which are exclusive to individual FPI applicants and hence will not be applicable to the applicants belonging to these categories, it added.

Accordingly, in order to save significant time and efforts for such FPI applicants, in terms of reviewing the application and signing the CAF, it has been proposed to seek only such information that is unique to such applicants.

In case of onboarding applicants belonging to certain categories, Sebi has proposed an abridged version of CAF having only those fields that are unique to such applicants should be used.

The remaining fields should either be auto-populated from the information available in the depository system or should be disabled, as applicable.

"While leveraging on the available information, an explicit consent to use the available information and confirmation that all the details other than those mentioned in the abridged version of CAF remain unchanged, shall be obtained from the applicant," Sebi proposed in its consultation paper.

After receiving the information from the applicant, custodians should update the details in CAF against the registration number of the applicant for future reference purposes and ensure that the CAF Module in the depository system reflects complete information (information filled in by applicants and those that are auto-populated from system) and seamless fetching of the same is possible.

"There has been feedback that an abridged version of CAF, having only those fields which are unique to the aforesaid applicants, shall help save significant time and efforts in terms of reviewing the application and signing a reduced number of pages," Sebi said.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has sought public comments till October 15 on the proposals.