Sebi steps up efforts for 'data culture' in securities market; constitutes panel

Apart from Buch, the panel has CEOs of stock exchanges and depositories, representatives of various stakeholders and senior officials of Sebi as members.

Noting that financial markets are traditionally data rich and data driven, Sebi said due to growing financial markets, the volume and variety of data have also increased many-fold over the years and the trend will continue.

With increasing size and complexity of financial markets, the importance of data for research, decision making, and innovations in financial markets cannot be over-emphasised, it added.

Given this, Sebi said it recognises that non-private data is a "public good" and that access to high-quality standardised data on various securities market activities is essential for fostering market transparency, operational efficiency and innovations in Indian securities market.

The regulator said its endeavour is to foster a "data culture" in the Indian securities market -- data for transparency, data for efficiency and data for innovation along with respect for data privacy.

The 20-member committee has been constituted as part of Sebi's initiatives to make shareable data on the securities market available for researchers, policy makers and general public alike and to enhance the quality of such data.

Other members of the panel include, BSE Managing Director (MD) and CEO Ashishkumar Chauhan; NSE MD and CEO Vikram Limaye; Mahesh Vyas, MD of CMIE; Prithvi Haldea, chairman at Prime Database; and Anuj Kumar, CEO of CAMS, information available with Sebi showed.

"Sebi will continue to work with MIIs and other market participants in furtherance of this data culture in the Indian securities market," it added.

Some of the other initiatives taken by the regulator, through its department of economic and policy analysis, include -- Sebi's data sharing policy, curated links for securities market data as well as reorganisation of data resources on its website and enriching data provision by market infrastructure institutions (MIIs).

The data sharing policy intends to facilitate access to data from Sebi to undertake analytics projects, research activities, among others, by various educational or research institutions and mother regulators.

The policy is aimed at streamlining the process of data sharing and formalisation of data protection measures to prevent data from misuse and unauthorised access.