Sebi plans helpline to assist investors

With an aim to resolve investors' grievances and educate them about markets, the regulator Sebi plans to start a nationwide toll-free helpline and launch awareness campaigns through newspapers, radio and TV channels.

Initially, the helpline would assist investors across the country in English and Hindi and the facility would be subsequently expanded to as many as 14 languages.

These languages include Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

Besides, the market regulator also plans to revamp its investor website to make it more user-friendly and plans to provide information in both text and audio-visual forms there.

The Sebi plans to provide information in 14 languages on its website, as against only in English at present.

The proposed moves are part of Sebi's Strategic Action Plan for Investor Education and Awareness for 2011 and all these activities would be funded from IPEF (Investor Protection and Education Fund), a senior official said.

As part of the the action plan, the Sebi has also proposed to sponsor columns on different aspects of financial education and securities markets in magazines and newspapers.

The media partner would need to get the content vetted by the Sebi. Besides, the Sebi has also decided to begin campaigns through mass media to provide important messages to investors, in English, Hindi and 12 other languages.

There would be both short and detailed messages for these campaigns and would focus on warning the investors about potential risks in the market and spreading of policy actions taken by the Sebi in the interest of investors.

These campaigns would include newspaper advertisements in non-financial dailies, 30-second prime time slots on TV channels and audio slots through radio, including FM channels.

The audio and video messages would be developed through the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC).

In addition, the Sebi is planning half-an-hour duration films to educate the prospective investors in various languages.

These NFDC-produced short-duration films would be hosted on Sebi website and aired on various TV channels.

Besides, the Sebi also plans to issue detailed messages, mostly related to investors' rights and responsibilities as also the do's and don'ts for them, through various market entities such as brokers, mutual funds and listed companies.

The Sebi has also decided to ask stock exchanges, depositories, mutual funds and other entities like AMFI and ANMI to organise about 5,000 educational and awareness programmes for investors across the country this year.

The regulator also plans to invite student groups from various schools and colleges to its headquarters impart an understanding of securities market to them.