The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Monday proposed a comprehensive overhaul and consolidation of information technology-related regulations applicable to market infrastructure institutions to simplify compliance requirements, remove redundancies and ensure consistency.
SEBI has proposed merging provisions of the master circulars for stock exchanges and clearing corporations with those of commodity derivatives, while also creating a consolidated circular covering common IT-related areas such as cyber security, cyber resilience, annual system audits, business continuity planning and disaster recovery (BCPDR), capacity planning and technology advisories.
Currently, several provisions are duplicated across different circulars, and frameworks could be streamlined to improve regulatory clarity and reduce compliance burden without diluting oversight.
SEBI has suggested removing repeated references to the Cyber Security and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) from various sections of existing circulars, while also harmonising capacity planning requirements across stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories.
“In general, if actual capacity utilisation of any component of stock exchanges and clearing corporations exceeds 75 per cent of the installed capacity, immediate action shall be taken by the MII, such as fine-tuning the applications/systems or enhancing the capacity. SCOT shall oversee such action taken by the MII,” the regulator said.
The regulator has further proposed merging provisions relating to co-location and co-hosting facilities in the commodity derivatives segment with the broader technology framework applicable to stock exchanges, while retaining segment-specific requirements. It would retain detailed provisions on system clock synchronisation with atomic clocks at a single location within the proposed framework instead of repeating them across multiple chapters.
A unified circular for MIIs would consolidate technology-related provisions currently spread across multiple circulars governing stock exchanges, clearing corporations and depositories. Public comments have been sought until July 13.