India’s Leading BFSI and FinTech Companies 2021

66 India’s Leading BFSI and FinTech Companies 2021 Experts’ Views Central Depository Services (India) Limited (CDSL) Howwouldyou summarize theevolution of digital innovations and digitization in the Indian securities market? Despite the carnage and the havoc wreaked by COVID-19 on most global supply chains, with leading economies seeing a contraction in GDP, securities markets worldwide have “risen from the phoenix” and have not seen any disruption in their operations even during these unprecedented times. In India also, the securities markets have remained operational and not seen even a single day of disruption. The credit for this goes to SEBI, who in the mid-90s embarked on a vision of digitizing the securities markets infrastructure. The shift from a floor-based physical market to a nationwide electronic market, the process of dematerialization of all securities, online account opening, and several other proactive measures of SEBI have yielded fruit during the current pandemic. Added to this was the creation of the Market Infrastructure Institutions group comprising of stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories who have coordinated with each other to ensure that the market remains operational throughout. The process of digital innovations and digitization has enhanced its utility in creating an ecosystem which enhances the user experience through FinTech solutions, to better risk management and integrity solutions like RegTech and SupTech solutions enabling, matching, the dynamic exponential increased participation in the securities market. The role of FinTech, RegTech and SupTech is going to increase with each passing day, right from account opening (with Aadhaar-based authentication being permitted with select institutions) to online investment platforms. The digital innovations and digitization can lead to an integration of account opening, investment, custody and record keeping, wherein the ability to reach and customize the requirement of each investor would be the mantra of global ecosystems. All innovations and advancements also open newer challenges and the ecosystems would have to be geared towards regulatory systems which would cater to the dynamic risk-based supervision at an investor level. Also, infrastructure institutions would have to constantly innovate and evolve in their cyber resilience and robustness as cyber threats would continue to remain as one of the highest areas of concern and risk to the consistency and sturdiness of uninterrupted markets. How do you see investor engagement evolving amid the digital evolution of the securities markets in India? In recent times, securities markets have seen a surge in participation, both in terms of demat account opening and turnover. This has primarily been driven by millennials, who strongly believe in DIY (Do It Yourself). CDSL has embarked on creating products and services which permit investors to “do it themselves”, which is in line with our vision of “Empowering the Atmanirbhar Niveshak” i.e. self-sufficient investor, through our digital services. Our endeavour is based on the foundation of convenience, security and safety of the CDSL platform and we are fully committed in bringing the ‘best in class’ features to our digital ecosystem. Our wholly-owned subsidiary, CDSL Ventures Ltd - the largest KYC Registration Agency - has recently received the approval to begin operations as a local Authentication User Agency (AUA)/e-KYC User Agency (KUA) with UIDAI. Also, we expect our insurance and commodity repository to gain momentum in the coming years. We continue to emphasize on empowering capital market participants, especially investors, through our safe digital services. Nehal Vora Managing Director & CEO Dun & Bradstreet