Social media disclosure
Also written SMP disclosure requirement
SEBI's requirement that regulated entities and their agents prominently show their registered name and registration number on social media handles and at the start of every securities-market-related video or post.
In plain language
Anyone can start a finance account on social media and sound like an expert. SEBI's worry is that an ordinary viewer cannot tell a registered broker or adviser from an unregistered person giving the same kind of content.
So SEBI requires its regulated entities, and their agents, to say clearly who they are wherever they post securities-market content — on the home page of the account, and again at the start of each video or piece of content.
How it works
Chapter 10, section 10.2.4, sets this out as a distinct disclosure requirement, alongside the chapter's other client-facing and surveillance duties. Regulated entities and their agents must prominently disclose their registered name and registration number in two places: on the home page of their social media handles, and at the beginning of each video or piece of content relating to the securities market that they upload.
The stated purpose is to let viewers clearly separate content coming from a SEBI-registered entity from content put out by unregistered persons — the disclosure is the mechanism that makes that separation checkable at a glance, rather than something a viewer has to research independently.
A worked example
A SEBI-registered commodity broking firm, registration number INZ0001XXXXX, runs an Instagram account posting daily views on gold and crude oil futures to its 50,000 followers.
Under this requirement, the firm must display "Registered with SEBI, INZ0001XXXXX" prominently on its account's home page or bio, and it must also state its registered name and registration number at the start of every video discussing gold or crude oil futures — not just once, in the bio, and never again inside the content itself.
An unregistered commentator running a similar-looking account with no such disclosure is, by the same rule, signalling to viewers that they are not dealing with a SEBI-regulated entity at all.
Why NISM asks about it
Chapter 10 (Code of Conduct and Investor Protection Measures), section 10.2.4, immediately after the discussion of Suspicious Transaction Reporting. Expect a recall question on where the disclosure must appear — both the account's home page and the start of each video — not just one or the other.
Common exam traps
- The disclosure is required in two places, not one — the account home page and the start of each individual video or post.
- This applies to the entity's agents as well as the entity itself, not only to the registered broker's own official account.
- The requirement is about identification, not about the content of the advice given — it does not, by itself, regulate what the video says.
Where this is taught
Free preparation for NISM Series XVIRelated terms
- Code of conductThe conduct obligations a broker accepts as a condition of registration — integrity, due skill and care, no manipulation, and a specific list of duties owed to the client and to other brokers.
- Advice in publicly accessible mediaSEBI's code-of-conduct rule that a stockbroker or its employee giving investment advice about any security on TV, print or online media must first disclose their own, their family's and their employer's position in it.
- Suitability ruleThe stock broker's code-of-conduct duty not to recommend a security to a client unless it has reasonable grounds to believe the recommendation suits that client's holdings, financial situation and investment objectives.