Is your Investment adviser Registered with SEBI?
Many investors who reach out to advisors want to be sure that they are dealing only with SEBI registered Investment Advisor.
And the regulator SEBI has also made it abundantly clear that investors should take financial advice only from SEBI Registered Investment Advisor. In fact, it was via a SEBI directive that shows that SEBI wants investors to deal ONLY with SEBI Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs).
The Registered Investment Advisors (RIA) are licensed by SEBI to give professional investment advice to their clients. They are not product sellers and they do not earn from commissions. Instead, they only earn from the fee paid directly by the clients to them. Since there is no sale of commission-generating products is involved, there is no conflict of interest. More importantly, this means that the investment advice coming from RIAs will be what is best suited for you and your goals. No wrong advice due to commission-earnings in RIAs case. Since RIA (Investment Advisors) are not product sellers, their focus is not in pushing the sale of any particular product. Their focus is the investors and their real financial goals.
How to check if Investment Advisor is registered with SEBI in India (2023)?
Where can an investor get the details about SEBI registered investment advisers?
The list of all SEBI registered investment advisers is available on SEBI website (link below). You can use the link below to check if your investment advisor is registered with SEBI or not:
https://www.sebi.gov.in/sebiweb/other/OtherAction.do?doRecognisedFpi=yes&intmId=13
You can search for your investment advisor and check for his/her SEBI registration number. Here is how the RIA search feature on SEBI’s website looks like (image below for reference):
SEBI through RIAs ensures that investors can expect ethical, competent advice from their advisors. And a good SEBI RIA or Investment Adviser will always put the client and not the product at the center. He will spend time and collect data to understand clients actual financial circumstances and goals. He will talk about expenses, income, other assets and most importantly, will try to understand your risk appetite and ability to withstand losses. That is, he will try to get into your shoes to see how your life and money are actually connected. It is only after knowing all this (and a lot more) that he will create a proper, well thought-out financial plan for you which will explain the goal-based investment strategy and suitable investment recommendations which are in sync with your overall financial plan.
Remember that SEBI-registered Investment Adviser gets no commission from anywhere. He only charges a fee from the clients and hence, offers conflict-free investment advice which is customized for each client’s unique financial requirement via a solid financial plan – which can really sort out their financial lives.
And these days, there are hundreds of charltans and imposters posing/actings as financial advisors online. Do read this note here about how to protect yourself from imposters.
And here are some of the Do’s and Don’ts provided by SEBI while dealing with Investment Advisors (from link or download from here). You should go through them to know the best practices as suggested by SEBI
Note (for complete transparency) – Dev Ashish, founder of Stable Investor is registered with SEBI as an Investment adviser (Regd. no. INA100005241).