NDS-OM

NDS-OM is the Reserve Bank of India's trading system for government securities. Buy and sell orders meet on the system and are matched automatically. No participant negotiates a price with another; the orders are anonymous.

Only institutions with an SGL or CSGL account could once use it. Newer guidelines have opened the door wider. Retail investors can now get in too.

A facility is now available to demat account holders of bank Participants who are SGL Account Holders and direct members of NDS-OM and CCIL. With this, retail individual investors holding demat accounts with bank Participants can purchase or sell government securities directly through the NDS-OM system — access that was previously limited to institutions maintaining SGL or CSGL accounts.

To make this easier in practice, NSDL has integrated an NDS-OM web module with its e-services facility, letting bank Participants offer investors a web trading facility — so investors can trade government securities online directly through the NDS-OM web module, using their existing NSDL demat account, without needing a separate SGL relationship of their own.

Ms Bhattacharya holds a demat account with a bank that is a Participant, an SGL Account Holder, and a direct member of NDS-OM and CCIL. Before the newer retail-access guidelines, she would have had no route into the NDS-OM market at all — that access was confined to institutions with their own SGL/CSGL relationships.

Under the current facility, she logs into NSDL's e-services portal, accesses the integrated NDS-OM web module, and places an order to buy Rs 5 lakh of a Central Government security directly against the market, using her existing NSDL demat account — with no need to open any separate institutional trading relationship to do so.

Chapter 11, section 11.4.1 (Government Securities), immediately after the discussion of Inter-SGL trade settlement. Expect NDS-OM tested on what it is (RBI's order-matching platform for G-Secs), who could access it historically (SGL/CSGL account holders), and the newer route that opened it to retail demat account holders through bank Participants and NSDL's integrated web module.

• NDS-OM access for retail investors runs through a demat account with a bank Participant that is itself an SGL Account Holder and direct NDS-OM/CCIL member — a retail investor does not get a standalone SGL account of their own through this route.
• This retail-access facility is an NSDL integration; the workbook is explicit that it is not enabled at CDSL.
• NDS-OM is order-matching (anonymous), not a negotiated bilateral deal system — the "OM" in the name is the distinguishing feature versus older negotiated dealing.
• Do not confuse NDS-OM with the Constituent SGL account itself — the CSGL account is the holding structure; NDS-OM is the trading platform through which trades in G-Secs are executed.