How do you become a SEBI registered investment adviser?

Regulation 3 of the SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013 says nobody may act as an investment adviser, or hold themselves out as one, without a SEBI certificate. Applications go to BSE Limited as the Investment Adviser Administration and Supervisory Body (IAASB), which assesses them and recommends them to SEBI. This page walks the route in order and links the detailed page for each step.

1. Check that investment adviser is the right registration

Investment advice is advice for the benefit of a client on securities or a portfolio containing them, and the regulations include financial planning in it. Research issued to an audience is the other registration: read Investment Adviser or Research Analyst. Trading calls are not investment advice under the second proviso to regulation 2(1)(l), as this page explains.

Some people already advise inside an exemption. A mutual fund distributor or an insurance agent who wants to advise more widely starts from the distributor page or the insurance agent page.

2. Meet the qualification

Regulation 7(1), as substituted from 25 November 2025, asks for a graduate degree or an equivalent qualification from a recognised university or institution, or a CFA Charter, together with the relevant NISM certification. The alternative is a NISM Post Graduate Program in the Securities Market (Investment Advisory) or in Financial Planning. The five-year experience clause was omitted from 16 December 2024. The eligibility checker runs your profile against these rules.

3. Pass NISM Series X-A and X-B

Advisers take X-A and X-B, and X-C is the renewal. Persons associated with investment advice also need certification. See which NISM certificate you need, who in your team needs one and when to renew.

4. Decide how you will register

• As an individual. An individual adviser whose clients go past 300 at any point, or whose fees in a year go past ₹3 crore, has to move to a non-individual registration: the 300-client line.
• Part-time, next to a job or business unrelated to securities, with no more than 75 clients at any point of time (regulation 13(h)).
• As a company or LLP: who a company needs, company and LLP fees and converting later.

5. Put the documents and the deposit together

The document set is in investment adviser documents for an individual, and the document checklist builds yours. The deposit starts at ₹1 lakh for up to 150 clients, lien-marked in a scheduled bank: the deposit page. An adviser also needs a risk profiling process and an agreement carrying the MITC before advising anyone: risk profiling and MITC consent.

6. File Form A on the BSE portal

The form is the same BSE membership portal research analysts use (the steps). BSE posts observations and you answer each round: common BSE observations and the observation decoder cover the usual ones.

7. Pay SEBI and receive the certificate

An individual or firm pays SEBI ₹2,000 with the application and ₹3,000 on grant, then ₹1,000 every five years. The breakdown is in investment adviser registration fees for an individual, and validity in does it expire?. The cost calculator adds the deposit.

8. Run the compliance year

From the grant date you work inside the fee limits (the fee limit tool checks a proposed fee), the wall between advice and distribution, the annual compliance audit, the client level segregation certificate, record keeping and the website rules. The compliance year and the compliance calendar put the dates in order.

Filing it yourself or with us

You can file alone; this page covers who manages it. Our fee for an individual registration is ₹15,000, with SEBI and BSE fees and the deposit paid at actuals. You sit NISM, fund the deposit and sign. We draft the declarations and the risk profiler, file the form and answer BSE until SEBI decides.