In a very surprising manner, SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India on 10th July, 2020 announced that it has revamped its committee which holds the key function of advising the capital markets regulator on matters which are related to regulations and development of mutual fund sector. This comes at a much unexpected time when the world is battling a world pandemic; SEBI decides to alter its committee for better results. The new 20-member advisory committee is headed by Usha Thorat. Usha Thorat is a former Deputy Governer of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). In 2013, the same committee was a 15 member committee which was headed by Janki Ballabh. This committee was changed after 7 years. 7 years happens to be a very long time to have a same committee. Changing the committee too often might affect the functioning of the committee as an unstable committee doesn’t provide great results.
The Committee is filled with esteemed personalities from banking sector some of whom include Mr. Sanjay Sapre (Franklin Templeton Asset Management Pvt. Ltd. President), Mr. Nilesh Shah (Kotak Mahindra AMC MD), Mr. Brij Gopal (Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund’s Independent Trustee Director), Mr. Rajnish Narula (Canara Robero AMC CEO), Mr. Ashish Chauhan (MD and CEO at BSE), Mr. kailash Kulkarni (CEO of L&T Investment Management), K. N. Vaidyanathan (Executive Vice President at M&M), Mr. Ananth Narayan (Associate Professor of Finance at SPJIMR) amongst others.
The committee also includes representatives from media and the Government. This committee’s role is to advise SEBI on issues related or arising in regards of regulation and development of mutual fund industry. The advices include disclosure requirements; measures that are needed to be taken by SEBI in order strengthen the security and bring more transparency in respect to mutual funds. Their duty is to provide inputs which the SEBI shall consider in order to improve the mutual funds industry. We hope the new committee does a fabulous job so that economy of the nation improves indirectly by their contributions.
