A few regulatory changes in March 2025, and how they will impact you
Change: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has partnered with the government’s digital wallet, DigiLocker, to minimise the creation of unclaimed assets in the securities market.
Impact: Starting April 1, 2025, investors will be able to securely store and access details of their demat holdings, mutual fund statements, and consolidated account statements (CAS) through DigiLocker.
Change: Sebi has proposed major amendments to improve transparency and liquidity in the corporate bond market. It proposed several amendments to the rules for the electronic book provider (EBP) and request for quote (RFQ) platforms.
Impact: The proposed amendments to the EBP and RFQ platforms by Sebi aim to address long-standing issues of inefficiency and lack of transparency in the corporate bond market.
Change: The National Stock Exchange (NSE) accelerated its share transfer process from a few months to just a few days.
Impact: Starting March 24, NSE Ltd shareholders can transfer shares in a shorter time, instead of the existing norm of 2-4 months. The development is in line with Sebi’s directive on October 14, mandating changes in share transfer rules.
Change: In a circular this month, Sebi announced its plans to launch a new platform called Mutual Fund Investment Tracing and Retrieval Assistant (MITRA) to help investors easily trace their inactive and unclaimed mutual fund folios.
Impact: The MITRA platform has been developed by the Registrar and Transfer Agents (RTAs) to provide investors with a searchable database of both inactive and unclaimed mutual fund folios at an industry level.
Change: For the financial year 2024-25, the Union Cabinet on March 19, 2025, approved an ‘incentive scheme’ to promote low-value Bharat Interface For Money - Unified Payments Interface (BHIM-UPI) transactions.
Impact: For transactions up to Rs 2,000 linked to the category of small merchants, the incentive would be provided at a rate of 0.15 per cent per transaction value, according to an official release by the government.
Change: The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has instructed banks and payment service providers to omit UPI IDs which are linked with inactive mobile numbers. Individuals using UPI with inactive mobile numbers will not be able to make transactions through payment apps, including Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm, effective from April 1, 2025.
Impact: This will improve security and prevent potential frauds. When UPI users change their mobile numbers, they often fail to delink them from their UPI accounts. These numbers are usually reassigned to new users by telecom operators, and the risk of unauthorised transactions follows. To curb such security threats, banks and payment platforms have been instructed to update their records regularly and remove UPI IDs linked with inactive numbers.
Change: The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) issued the gazette notification of the Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) on March 20, 2025. It will be effective from April 1, 2025.
Impact: UPS is currently for the central government employees. However, state governments have the freedom to adopt the scheme for their employees. UPS assures a minimum pension of Rs 10,000 and a maximum of 50 per cent of the average salary in the last 12 months of working, subject to terms and conditions.
*List is not exhaustive | Compiled by Tarun Bhardwaj