To keep a check on unauthorised trades through investor accounts, stock exchanges will now send SMSes to all investors. The investor will also be able to inform the bourses in case of an ‘unauthorised’ trade.

“There have been a lot of frauds happening as far as trading is concerned. To prevent this, I believe sending these SMS alerts are a step in the right direction,” said Kishor Ostwal, CMD, CNI Research.

The BSE has already commenced the SMS service to investors. The NSE will send details of the transactions from October 15.

Analysts said these measures are an initiative to protect investors from frauds and malpractices that may occur in the trading system. They hinted towards the recent case of erroneous trades by Emkay Global financial Services, which sent the Nifty spiralling downwards.

In August 2011, the SEBI had advised the exchanges to provide the facility of SMS and email alerts to investors. Following this the bourses had asked its trading members to upload mobile numbers and email addresses of their clients in unique client code database of the exchange.

In all now 3

The only disadvantage of this system would be that investors would receive three SMSes for every trade (from broker; from depository participants (NSDL/CDSL); and from the bourses).

There are also a number of people who have registered themselves on the “Do Not Disturb” (DND) to avoid pesky messages. In this case, “An alert will be sent to every member. If someone is on the DND list he will be asked if he would like access to this kind of trading information. Only if he agrees, then trading details will be sent to him,” said a market participant.

There is an option of receiving this alert via e-mail also.

> priya.s@thehindu.co.in

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