It feels great to announce that we have finally launched “FYERS Demat Accounts” and our Depository Participant (DP) license with CDSL is live. It’s been a long wait for us, our associates and many people who have postponed their plans of opening an account with us in the last one and a half-year due to our association with IL&FS DP services. The wait is over and you no longer need to open a Demat account with any third party DP to access our services. This is perhaps the most eventful news from us since our very inception considering that we needed to change our business constitution and whatnot 😊.
This has happened just ahead of Dussehra, a symbolic period that is celebrated as the victory of good over evil. In our case, it was overcoming the various hurdles we faced along our journey as a self-funded broker and providing our clients with an opportunity to get a much better experience going forward!
What this means for our existing clients:
- Only Trading A/c–If you are a client with an existing trading account and you have not opened an IL&FS Demat account through us, then it is really easy for you. All you will need to do is open a new Fyers Demat account and it will be linked to your existing trading account. If you have linked a CMR copy of an existing Demat account, it will be unlinked before mapping your new FYERS Demat account.
- Trading A/c + Demat A/c – If you have a trading account with us along with a Demat account with IL&FS, then you may want to open a new FYERS Demat account and then transfer your holdings from IL&FS Demat to your new Demat account with us. If you’re having trouble with this, you can get in touch with our support team for help.
Benefits of FYERS Demat Accounts:
After having dealt with various brokers & service providers over the years, we feel that the ownership of Demat accounts should be made simple & hassle-free. Below are the top 6 reasons to open a FYERS Demat account:
- Zero Demat Account Opening Fee – That’s right! There are no hidden terms & conditions with regard to this. Please note that Zero A/C opening fees are applicable to all clients who have opened their Demat accounts with us w.e.f. 24th November 2020. To check the latest fees, read this article.
- Zero Annual Maintenance Charges (AMC) – There will be no AMC charges after you open a Demat account with us. On the guidelines of SEBI, the depositories had to introduce 2 types of Demat accounts, namely Regular & BSDA which is intended for small investors with little holdings. The charges for these accounts were subsidized by other brokers and little AMC was levied. At FYERS, we have decided to completely nullify AMC charges altogether for both regular & BSDA accounts and levy the same DP charges for both types of accounts. Therefore, there won’t be any differential charges as such. Please note that Zero AMC is applicable to all clients who have opened their Demat accounts with us on or before 31st March 2020. To check the latest fees, read this article.
- Zero Brokerage for Equity Delivery – As you are aware, brokerage charges are zero for the equity delivery segment. You can learn more about it in this blog post. You can also calculate your brokerage costs in equities using our brokerage calculator. We implemented zero brokerage to encourage the culture of equity investing in India. We hope to see much higher participation considering we now have our own DP license.
- Low charges for Demat services–Other incidental charges for pledge/unpledge, DP charges, dematerialization charges etc. are low in comparison to the market standards. You can get more details of these charges in the tariff sheet. You can also access the tariff sheet from the Demat AOF in the Downloads.
- Transparency & Compliance – As a brokerage, we have always believed in practicing the utmost transparency with our clients and the trading community at large. We have a team of experts in compliance & operations that perform tasks as per the best-practices. For instance, when a client purchases shares for delivery, the settlement happens on T + 2 days. These shares must be transferred to the client’s beneficiary account. However, there are many brokers out there who store the client holdings in the broker’s pool or broker’s beneficiary account. This allows the broker to transfer the shares internally between the different accounts. Also, when companies declare corporate actions such as dividend and bonus shares, clients of such brokers may not receive it directly to their Demat accounts as they will be received by the broker at first. These are just some possibilities out there. At FYERS, we make sure to transfer the purchased securities to the clients’ Demat accounts on the settlement. This way we ensure that the holdings are safe in your own Demat account and it is not misused in any manner and all the benefits of corporate actions will be received by you directly.
- No Proprietary Trading–Most importantly, since our inception we have stayed away from any type of proprietary trading activities. It has been a policy at FYERS to avoid any potential conflict of interest with our clients. As a brokerage, we believe our focus must be on providing services to traders rather than trading ourselves. Considering the nature of our business, a large part of it involves the management of client funds, we are committed to staying away from prop-trading activities which can potentially put the clients’ capital at risk at some point if the broker’s risk management fails on their own trades. Since we don’t have a prop license, we can neither have any conflict of interest nor pose additional risk to our clients that are mentioned above.
We are constantly working on making your investing experience better with us based on your valuable feedback. FYERS is now at par with the well-established stockbrokers in terms of the important licenses, namely NSE, BSE, MCX & CDSL DP. If you are already our client with a trading A/c and want to open a Demat account with us, you can download the Demat A/c opening form here. For further instructions, please read this article.
Happy Investing!