What IA and RA registration costs, and what those figures leave out

6 min read

IA and RASEBI registration

SEBI's own fees are small enough to surprise people. The deposit, the enlistment fee and the annual audit are where the real number sits.

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Two numbers get quoted at people looking into these registrations, and both are usually wrong. One is a lakhs-scale figure that belongs to the old net worth regime. The other is a consultant's package price with no breakdown. Here is what SEBI itself charges.

Fees payable to SEBI

Investment Adviser	Application	Registration (first five years)	Renewal (next five years)
Individuals and firms	₹2,000	₹3,000	₹1,000
Body corporate including LLP	₹10,000	₹15,000	₹5,000

Research Analyst	Application	Registration (first five years)	Renewal (next five years)
Individual and partnership firms	₹2,000	₹3,000	₹1,000
Proxy advisers	₹2,000	₹3,000	₹1,000
Body corporate including LLP	₹20,000	₹30,000	₹5,000

An individual applying as an Investment Adviser pays SEBI ₹5,000 in total to get registered and stay registered for five years. That is the whole of SEBI's direct charge.

The deposit

The deposit is not a fee. It stays yours, sitting in a scheduled bank marked as lien in favour of IAASB or RAASB, and it scales with your client count.

Clients in the previous financial year	Deposit
Up to 150	₹1 lakh
151 to 300	₹2 lakh
301 to 1,000	₹5 lakh
1,001 and above	₹10 lakh

Same slabs for Investment Advisers and Research Analysts.

The slab is fixed by the maximum number of clients on any day of the previous financial year, and you revise it by 30 April of the following year. Existing Research Analysts had to be compliant by 30 April 2025. For existing Investment Advisers, the January 2025 circular said 30 June 2025 and the June 2025 master circular says 30 September 2025. The master circular is the later instrument.

What the fee tables do not include

IAASB and RAASB administrative fees. Both are payable on enlistment, and SEBI's documents say only that the amount is as specified by the body. We quote the current figure at scoping rather than guess at it here.
NISM certification costs for you and for every person associated with advice or research services.
The annual compliance audit. This is a recurring professional fee for the life of the registration.
The annual client-level segregation certificate from a member of ICAI, ICSI or ICMAI, or from your auditor.
A functional website, which regulation 19A of both sets of regulations requires you to maintain and to confirm to IAASB or RAASB.

Renewal is not what it used to be

A certificate of registration stays valid until it is suspended or cancelled. For Research Analysts, SEBI says there is no renewal requirement at all, though validity depends on paying the applicable fees every five years. For Investment Advisers the certificate is similarly open-ended, subject to periodic fees. Nobody is going to send you a renewal reminder that doubles as a bill.

One cost we will not quote

How long registration takes. It depends on SEBI's queue and on how fast clarifications get answered, and no SEBI document read for this article states a timeline. Any firm quoting you a guaranteed number of weeks is quoting you their hope.

Sources

Sources read on 5 August 2026. SEBI revises these requirements, so we re-confirm every figure against the current circular before it goes into an application.

BuildWright Consultants provides documentation, application-drafting, and compliance facilitation for SEBI Investment Adviser and Research Analyst registration. This is not legal advice and does not replace a qualified professional. We are not SEBI and do not guarantee registration outcomes. Eligibility, deposit, fee, and timeline requirements are as prescribed by SEBI from time to time. Every figure we publish names the SEBI document it came from and the date it was read, and we re-confirm it against the current circular during scoping.