Sebi’s new margin rules postponed, guideline to verify upfront collection of margins issued

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Aimed at making the market safer for investors, markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) postponed the implementation of the enhanced margin requirements for trading in the stock market by three months to December 1. Among several rules brought in by Sebi, it asked traders and investors to pay intra-day margin, while the current system is of end-of-the-day margin. Margins are stocks, money or some other form of liquid assets that traders and investors deposit with exchanges, which act as a form of security for their financial exposure in the market.

Guideline to verify upfront collection of margins

• The applicable upfront margins will be collected from the clients in advance of the trade.
• Clearing corporations will send minimum four snapshots of client wise margin requirement to trading member (TM) or clearing member (CM) for them to know the intra-day margin requirement per client in each segment.
• Number of times snapshots need to be sent in a day may be decided by the respective clearing corporation depending on market timings subject to a minimum of four snapshots in a day. The snapshots would be randomly taken in pre-defined time windows.
• For commodity derivatives segment, last snapshot for commodity derivatives will be generated at 5 PM.
• The client wise margin file provided by the clearing corporations to trading or clearing member will contain the end of the day (EOD) margin requirements of the client as well as the peak margin requirement of the client, across each of the intra-day snapshots.
• The member will have to report the margin collected from each client, as at EOD and peak margin collected during the day, in a manner prescribed by the regulator.
• EOD margin obligation of the client will be compared with the respective client margin available with the TM/CM at EOD and peak margin obligation of the client, across the snapshots, will be compared with respective client peak margin available with the TM/CM during the day.
• With regard to penalty, higher of the shortfall in collection of the margin obligations at the two prescribed manner will be considered for levying of fine.
• The verification of availability of margins with TM/ CM will be done by exchanges or  clearing corporations on a weekly basis by verification of the balances in the books or of the TM/ CM in respect of the client.
• Peak margin obligation of client across snapshots will be adopted in a phased manner starting from December 1, 2020 and full adoption  will happen by September 1, 2021.

 For three months from the date of implementation, Sebi said 25 per cent of peak margin obligation of the client across the snapshots will be compared with respective client peak margin available with the TM/CM during the day. This will be 50 per cent for subsequent three months and thereafter 75 per cent for subsequent three months and finally 100 per cent.

It, further, said shortfall in collection of margins will be calculated by taking into consideration the phased adoption of peak margin obligation of client.During the period of phased adoption, brokers will have to ensure that the funded component is out of their funds and not clients funds.

In a separate circular, Sebi said it has modified the eligibility criteria for selection of underlying commodity futures for options on commodity futures. The regulator has decided to do away with the requirement of "the underlying 'Futures contracts' on the corresponding commodity shall be amongst the top five futures contracts in terms of total trading turnover value of previous 12 months".

The decision has been taken on the basis of representations received from stock exchanges and stakeholders.

(With PTI inputs)

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