Registration of financial advisors. At a meeting of capital market intermediaries, a Foreign Institutional Investor (FII) remarked that India is the only country where unregistered entities are allowed to spew financial advice to investors over television channel without any fiduciary responsibility or registration whatsoever. It is interesting that Sebi has made no effort to bring in some restrictions on such specific portfolio advice even after it has fined such advisors for abuse of their positions.

In the past, officials have argued that there is no provision in the Sebi Act to initiate action against such superficial advice, but the Sebi Act has been amended several times and is apparently due for another comprehensive overhaul. If financial advisors have not yet been regulated, it is probably the market regulator fails to see the need to do so.