In a departure from the usual way the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has approached mutual fund regulations, the capital markets regulator has now attempted to kill several birds with one stone with the consultation paper it put out on 7 October on strengthening the Sebi (Investment Adviser) Regulations, 2013.
Till now it appeared to have a track record of adopting a piecemeal approach—one loophole filled up today, another one tomorrow, yet another one the day after, and so on.
It was about a month ago when, amid growing chatter that there were many distributors out there who were masquerading as financial planners or advisers—or some fancy names or another doling out investor advice without registering with Sebi under the registered investment adviser (RIA) guidelines—that we at Mint decided to dig in. We had no idea at the time that Sebi, too, was doing its own groundwork and was soon to go after such unauthorised planners.
