SEBI issues new IT guidelines for stock exchanges, depositories and clearing corporations

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has rolled out fresh directives to ensure robust capacity planning and real-time performance monitoring for stock exchanges, clearing corporations, and depositories. These guidelines aim to boost critical IT systems' operational efficiency and resilience within market infrastructure institutions (MIIs).

Here are the salient points from the SEBI’s guidelines:

Future-Ready capacity planning

MIIs are now required to create advanced frameworks for estimating capacity needs, leveraging trends, historical data, transaction growth, and business changes. A methodology for this estimation must be approved by the Standing Committee on Technology (SCOT) and the Governing Board and submitted to SEBI within three months.

Enhanced system capacity requirements

MIIs must maintain system capacity at least 1.5 times the projected peak load to ensure service availability during high-volume periods. The peak load projections should be derived from the past 180 days’ data and other relevant factors.

Quarterly stress testing

Regular stress tests must be conducted every quarter to evaluate system performance under heavy transaction loads.

Real-time monitoring and alerts

MIIs are mandated to deploy automated systems for real-time performance monitoring. These systems must generate alerts when defined thresholds are breached, ensuring timely detection and resolution of issues.

Action plans for high utilisation

Stock exchanges and clearing corporations must act promptly if IT component utilisation exceeds 75% of installed capacity. Depositories are required to respond if utilisation stays above 75% for 15 consecutive days.

Policy implementation and deadlines

MIIs must establish a capacity planning and real-time monitoring policy approved by SCOT and SEBI. While capacity planning measures must be implemented within three months, all other guidelines are effective immediately.