NSE, BSE Will Become 'Alternative Trading Venues' From April 1 - SEBI Order

New Delhi: SEBI has issued important guidelines to create procedures for interoperability in the Indian stock exchanges. In its latest update on Thursday, SEBI said that going forward, NSE would act as an alternative trading venue for BSE and vice-versa. The provisions of this circular would come into effect from April 1, 2025, SEBI said.

"Both exchanges would prepare a joint SOP that would include a plan to be invoked at the time of outage on one exchange along with the flow of activity involving the affected exchange and its alternative trading venue and roles/responsibility of each of them," SEBI said in a circular.

The market regulator also asked the exchanges to draw SOP to cover changes, if any, in the systems of stock brokers / CCs to implement the measures mentioned in para 3 of the circular for end investors. "The aforesaid SOP should be submitted to SEBI within 60 days from the date of the Circular," SEBI said.

What is interoperability in the stock market?

Before 2019, exchanges, namely NSE and BSE used separate clearing corporations, but interoperability was introduced to allow more flexibility in such situations. Now, if one clearing corporation faces an issue, trades can be transferred and settled through another clearing entity, ensuring continued market operations.