Sebi suggests stock exchanges to frame policy to share data for research purposes; asks them to promote data democratisation

Markets regulator Sebi on Tuesday proposed that stock exchanges and other market infrastructure institutions frame their own policy for sharing data for the purpose of research to promote data democratisation, data privacy and data accountability.

However, data shared with vendors for commercial purposes will not fall under this policy, Sebi suggested in its consultation paper.

The markets regulator has a data sharing policy to share anonymised data that are not publicly available.

However, since Sebi is not the originator of most of the market data, the scope of sharing data under the extant data sharing policy of Sebi was deliberated by its Market Data Advisory Committee (MDAC).

The committee suggested that in order to achieve the balance between data privacy vis-a-vis providing access to data, organisations, which are the actual source of data, will need to have a policy on data collection, processing, storage, dissemination and sharing.

Accordingly, the regulator, in its consultation paper, has proposed that "stock exchanges, depositories and clearing corporations will have their own policy for sharing data separately for research purposes only".

The regulator has proposed that market infrastructure institutions (MIIs) -- stock exchanges, depositories and clearing corporations -- should segregate data available, for each market segment, into two baskets.

Data in the first basket will be those which can be shared with the public. 

These should be aggregate and analysed data only. This basket will also include reporting and disclosure data that are mandated by the regulators. 

The principle should be to avoid disclosing any personal, sensitive or confidential information in the public domain.

Data in the second basket will contain information that cannot be shared with the public. 

This data would include KYC information/trade logs/holding details of an entity among others with the identity of the entity.

This would also include anonymised data that could be used to identify an entity directly or indirectly.

MIIs have been proposed to identify data in the baskets and accordingly frame their data sharing policy. 

Further, the categorisation of data into the two baskets should be uniform and market segment wise for each category of MIIs.

The data made available through the first basket should be in a stakeholder friendly format.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had sought public comments till October 29 on the proposals.