SEBI Investor Education Fund
SEBI maintains a dedicated budget allocation and expenditure framework for investor education and awareness, funded through regulatory fees, fines, and disgorgement, which finances a range of initiatives including investor awareness workshops, online education portals, NISM certification programmes, exchange-conducted seminars, and research on retail investor behaviour.
SEBI's statutory mandate under Section 11(1) of the SEBI Act, 1992 includes protecting the interests of investors and promoting investor education. To fulfil this mandate, SEBI has historically dedicated a portion of its annual income to investor education, awareness, and research activities.
SEBI's primary revenue sources included registration fees paid by market intermediaries, annual fees from mutual funds and other regulated entities, penalties and fines collected through enforcement actions, and disgorgement amounts recovered from market manipulators. A portion of these collections — particularly penalties and disgorgement — was earmarked for investor protection purposes in SEBI's annual budget.
The National Institute of Securities Markets (NISM), established by SEBI as a public trust in 2006, was the principal institution through which SEBI channelled educational initiatives. NISM developed and administered the certification examinations mandatory for financial intermediaries (NISM Series-VA for mutual fund distributors, Series-VIII for equity derivatives, Series-X for investment advisers, and others). NISM also ran post-graduate and executive education programmes, conducted research on securities markets, and published policy papers.
SEBI also funded and directed investor awareness programmes conducted by the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI), stock exchanges (NSE and BSE had dedicated investor education cells), and depositories (NSDL and CDSL conducted investor awareness programmes under SEBI direction). Exchange-conducted investor awareness workshops covered topics such as basics of stock market investing, mutual fund selection, understanding derivatives risk, and recognising fraudulent schemes.
The SEBI Investor Helpline (toll-free 1800-266-7575) and the SCORES (SEBI Complaints Redress System) portal were also funded and maintained through SEBI's operational budget, providing grievance redress mechanisms that served as both consumer protection tools and data sources for identifying systemic investor harm patterns.
SEBI's annual reports disclosed total expenditure on investor education activities. In recent years, tens of crore rupees were allocated annually for these programmes. The effectiveness of these initiatives was evaluated through SEBI-commissioned surveys on investor awareness, financial literacy levels, and awareness of SCORES.