The number of individuals holding more than three demat accounts linked to a single PAN (Permanent Account Number) has surged significantly. In FY 2024, this figure reached 7.9 million, marking a 10-fold increase compared to 700,000 in FY 2017.
According to a study published in SEBI’s latest bulletin, the proportion of multiple demat accounts linked to a single PAN has grown 504 times since 2016-17. In FY 2017, around 6.18 million unique PAN holders had two or more demat accounts, but this number jumped to 37.3 million in FY 2024. The rapid rise in multiple demat accounts has outpaced the total growth of demat accounts, which surged 444% to reach 151 million during this period.
The study also revealed that the number of individuals holding three or more demat accounts linked to one PAN rose 6.9 times since FY 2017, while those with two accounts increased 4.9 times.
More Demat Accounts than Unique Investors
A key insight from the study is that the growth in total demat accounts is higher than the growth in unique individual accounts, indicating that many investors operate multiple accounts under the same PAN. By March 2024, only 59.4% of demat accounts were unique to an individual PAN, down from 79.9% in FY 2017.
The study, “The Growth of Individual Investors in the Indian Security Market,” was prepared by Kalyani H, Shiny Sunil, and Prabhash Kumar Rath. It also stated that in March 2024, a record 89.6 million individual demat accounts were present. According to Economic Survey 2024-25, it rose to 115 million in December 2024.
Why Investors Hold Multiple Demat Accounts
Investment advisor Jayant Vidwans mentioned that investors maintain a range of demat accounts in a move to use a range of portfolio management service (PMS) plans, as providers of such a service use one demat account for one scheme of investing.
SEBI data indicate that discretionary PMS investors have gone up in terms of numbers, rising to 181,384 in November 2024, from 70,994 in March 2017. Vidwans supplemented that documentation of all family demat accounts can go a long way in succession and succession planning.
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Source: BS
News Desk
