CDSL crosses 3cr demat account mark

Mumbai: Central

Depository

Services (

CDSL

), the largest depository in India in terms of number of

demat clients

, crossed the three-crore accounts mark last month. The milestone was achieved on the back of a resurgence in opening of

demat accounts

since the lockdown months of April-June 2020, a lower cost structure and the convenience it offers to both brokers and customer.

CDSL, the only listed depository in the country, took just a year to add an additional one crore

demat

accounts, having crossed the two-crore mark in January 2020. CDSL had crossed the one-crore accounts mark in August 2015 and took nearly four and half years to add another crore, it said in a statement.

Currently, CDSL enjoys a 59% market share among the two depositories with the balance 41% with the National Securities Depository (

NSDL

), the oldest one in India, which has about 2.2 crore accounts. The two depositories together now have about 5.2 crore demat accounts, official data showed.

“Of the new accounts, 98.4% comes from retail investors, and with an outreach of 97% PIN codes (in the country),” Sebi whole-time member G Mahalingam was quoted as saying in the release. The senior regulatory officer also reminded that there was an immense opportunity of growth, given that a large part of India’s population was still outside of the securities markets.

CDSL chairman B V Chaubal said that a large number of new demat accounts were being opened from tier II and tier III cities, which was indicative of the deepening and widening of the Indian capital market. Chaubal also said that the Covid crisis has brought an opportunity to accelerate digital innovations and “CDSL has been working towards strengthening its digital footprint and providing various digital solutions for the investors”.

Since the nationwide lockdown, which had started in the last week of March 2020, the highly technology-dependent discount brokerages saw a huge spurt in demat accounts’ opening, with a majority of these being opened through CDSL. The co-founders of one of the discount brokerages, which continuously tries to minimise costs for its clients by depending more on technology, recently told TOI that since CDSL was offering demat services at a cost that was about 30% less than NSDL’s, hence these brokerages preferred it over the oldest depository in the country.