SEBI Plans to Strengthen Market Surveillance System

The logo of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), India’s market regulator.

(Photo: Reuters)

Regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is planning to beef up its market surveillance system as well as its tool for speedy analysis of trade data, which identifies possible violations such as insider trading, share price manipulation and front running.

In this regard, SEBI has invited applications from the interested companies to provide IT services for the maintenance of its integrated market surveillance system (IMSS), data warehousing and business intelligence system (DWIBS).

The market watchdog undertakes its market surveillance functions through integrated market surveillance system, which was put in use from 2013, and collects data for suspicious market activities through multiple sources, including its network systems at exchanges and depositories.

The data warehousing and business intelligence system, which went live in 2011, is used for speedy analysis of trade data in a bid to identify networked clients who possibly indulge in securities law violations such as insider trading, front running and share price manipulation.

These systems carry out data acquisition on a daily basis from multiple data sources for surveillance related activities.

The scope of the work includes maintenance support for IT equipment as well as providing on-site service engineers for management of IMSS and DWBIS systems, the regulator noted.

SEBI will admit applications for this project till 22 January.

Spelling out the eligibility criteria, SEBI said the bidding company should be registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and should be operational in the field of information technology (IT) for at least five years.

The area of operations for the firm should include IT infrastructure management, development and maintenance of IT projects.

The net worth of the company should be Rs 40 crore or more for two out of the last three financial years or at least Rs 40 crore for three of the last five fiscals.

The interested firms should have a well-qualified workforce employed in the domains of network or security monitoring and IT network implementation, it added.