To facilitate ease of onboarding of Foreign Portfolio Investors and reduce duplication of available information, markets regulator Sebi on Tuesday said applicants can choose to fill either the entire Common Application Form (CAF) or an abridged version with unique fields. If the abridged form is chosen, the remaining fields should either be auto-populated from the information available in the depository system or should be disabled, as applicable, based on existing information in the CAF module, Sebi said in a circular.

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The applicants must consent to use the pre-filled information and confirm that it is accurate, except for any updates they provide.

This will come into force after three months from the date of this circular.

According to Sebi's Master Circular issued in May, every FPI applicant must submit a signed Common Application Form along with supporting documents for registration.

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.
For these categories, only certain unique fields need to be filled by each applicant, making the full form redundant, it added.

Accordingly, with an objective to facilitate ease of onboarding for FPI applicants and reduce duplication of available information, Sebi said that FPIs may "be provided with an option to fill the entire CAF or fill an abridged version of CAF, i.E., a version of CAF where applicants fill only those fields that are unique to them".

The regulator has asked Designated Depository Participants (DDPs) to ensure that all information, including auto-populated fields, is accurately reflected in the CAF module for each applicant.

The Custodians and Designated Depository Participants Standards Setting Forum (CDSSF), in coordination with Sebi, will set guidelines for auto-populated fields and other process standards.