One regulator, three jobs
India's securities market has a statutory regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India. The Act that created it in 1992 gives it three jobs in a single sentence: to protect the interests of investors, to promote the development of the securities market, and to regulate it.
Those three pull against each other more often than the sentence suggests. A rule that protects you — longer disclosures, tighter limits, slower approvals — is a rule that makes the market a little less convenient to use. Most of what SEBI does is choosing where to stand between them.
It is not the only authority in the room. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs administers company law, which is what decided your dividend and your bonus in chapter 01.07. The Reserve Bank of India stands behind the banks and the payment systems your money moves through. SEBI's territory is the securities market itself: the exchanges, the brokers, the depositories, the funds, and what a listed company must tell you.
The layer you actually touch
SEBI does not watch your trades. The exchange does. NSE and BSE are the first level of regulation for the brokers who are their members: they set membership conditions, monitor trading, run surveillance (01.04.06) and can suspend or expel a member. The clearing corporations and depositories do the same for theirs.
So there is a chain. SEBI writes and enforces the rules; the exchange and the depository enforce them against the firms they admit; the firm you opened an account with answers to those. When something goes wrong, the chain is also the route your complaint takes — starting at the bottom, not the top.
That structure has a cheerful side effect. A broker's failure is mostly other people's problem before it is yours: the clearing corporation guarantees the settlement, and the exchange holds a fund to compensate investors when a member is declared a defaulter. At NSE, the ceiling is ₹35 lakh per investor for each defaulting member, raised from ₹25 lakh for defaults declared after August 2024.
Where does your complaint go?
Four things that could happen to you. Tap each and follow it.
The routes are the shape of the system, not legal advice. Timelines and the entity you complain against depend on the case; the exchange and SEBI publish the current process.
Which of these is SEBI's job?
The edge of protection
It is worth being precise about what is protected, because the gap is where most disappointment lives. Your shares are safe in a way your money in a business is not: they sit in your name in a depository, and 01.04.05 showed why a broker's collapse does not take them.
The settlement is guaranteed by the clearing corporation, so a stranger failing to pay does not become your problem. A defaulting broker is covered, up to a limit, by the exchange's fund. Fraud, manipulation and unregistered advice are offences somebody can be punished for.
The price is not protected. Nor is the quality of the business, the truth of a forecast, or your decision. A regulator can make sure you were told the truth on time. It cannot make the truth pleasant.
- Your shares, if the broker fails
- held in your own demat account (01.04.05)
- The trade, if the other side fails
- guaranteed by the clearing corporation
- Your claim, if the broker is a declared defaulter
- up to ₹35 lakh at NSE
- Your loss, if the price falls
- covered by nobody
Which of these is a complaint a regulator can act on?
Keep the paperwork you already receive: contract notes after every trade, the monthly statement from your depository, and the ledger from your broker. A grievance is decided on what can be shown, and every one of those documents arrives by email without you asking. The route always starts with the entity itself — the broker, the company or its registrar — because a regulator's first question is what they said when you asked.
A regulator can only enforce what a company is required to say. So the next question is what that is: what a listed company must tell you, how quickly, and where it appears.