Demat account additions weaken, well below FY22 average

NEW DELHI: The incremental number of new demat accounts added stood at 1.9 million in March versus 2.1 million in February, registering a month-on-month decline of 8 per cent, Motilal Oswal Financial Services said in a report.

Additionally, this figure is significantly lower than the average of 2.9 million new accounts added per month in FY22. The number of total demat accounts increased to 114 million in March.

In terms of the total and incremental demat account market share, CDSL continues to gain on a MoM basis. On a YoY basis, NSDL lost 230bp/730bp market share in total/incremental demat accounts.

The total number of active user clients at NSE declined sequentially for the ninth consecutive month to 9.4 per cent YoY and 2.7 per cent MoM to 32.6m in March, the report said.

The intensity of the fall was higher at 0.9m accounts in March v/s 0.7m in February. Currently, the top five discount brokers account for 60.0 per cent of the overall NSE active clients, an increase from 59.6 per cent in February.

According to Motilal Oswal Financial Services, the capital market sentiment of India Inc was volatile in March, with the Nifty hovering in the lower 17,000s for most of the month.