Sebi investor corpus swells, but spending stagnates

The growing fund-spending gap has renewed calls for a shift to outcome-based deployment

- Neha Joshi

Minuscule direct spending from the market regulator's swelling corpus meant for investor education and protection has triggered calls for a sharp shift in strategy, particularly targeting first-time investors and countering misinformation from financial influencers.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) Investor Protection and Education Fund (IPEF) saw its corpus jump nearly 43% in FY25, from ₹533 crore in FY24 to ₹761 crore. Yet, direct deployment remained stagnant at 2.7 crore. This growing gulf between the fund's size and spending has renewed calls for Sebi to shift from event-led awareness drives to outcome-focused deployment.

A Sebi official, however, pointed out that the regulator also spends money on investor initiatives via market infrastructure institutions such as stock exchanges and depositories—which isn't reflected in its annual report.