Institutional investors no longer need to juggle multiple trade confirmations from different stock exchanges. Sebi has come up with one contract note for trades executed at both NSE and BSE
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has made it mandatory for stockbrokers and other intermediaries to use a Common Contract Note (CCN) with a unified Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP) for trades executed across exchanges, particularly National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange).
“The reform will simplify the post-trade reporting process by consolidating trades executed across multiple exchanges into a single, harmonised document, eliminating the need to process multiple contract notes,” said the market regulator in a press release dated July 2, 2025.
The directive, which came into effect on June 27, 2025, is expected to reduce the post-trade confusion for investors and traders.
With this new rule, investors will now receive one unified contract note showing a single average price for all the trades executed across both exchanges.
Contract notes are useful for institutional traders who handle large volumes and high-value trades across exchanges. For these traders, a contract note is more than just a formality; it is an important operational and compliance document.
Earlier, institutional traders used to deal with separate trade reports from each exchange, which made reconciliation, settlement, and compliance a tedious process.
“The move aims at increasing cost efficiency, reducing compliance burden for market participants and ensuring consistent trade reporting aligned with the clearing corporation interoperability framework, said Sebi.
This is a part of the regulator’s ongoing push to improve the ease of doing business in India’s capital markets.
A contract note is essentially a trade report which provides a detailed summary of all trades executed by an investor on a particular trading day.
It is issued by stockbrokers and serves as a proof of trade and includes crucial information such as the names of the securities bought or sold, quantity, price, trade time, and applicable charges like brokerage, taxes, and exchange fees.
VWAP or Volume Weighted Average Price is a trading benchmark used by investors to get the average price at which a stock is traded throughout the day, based on both volume and price.
VWAP puts more importance on prices when a larger number of shares are traded. In simple terms, if a stock sees heavy trading at a certain price, that price will have a bigger influence on the VWAP.
Traders use VWAP to ensure they are not overpaying or underselling in volatile markets.