Come April 1, 2005, and any investor wishing to punch in trades of Rs 100,000 and above or transacting in mutual funds with a value of Rs 100,000 and above will have to have a unique identification number.

Sounds scary? This is part of Securities and Exchange Board of India's attempts to bring in some order in the markets space and gradually build up a database of those in the market which would be readily available to all concerned.

It is called the Central Database of Market Participants, or MAPIN. It envisages the creation of a central database of market participants and investors with UINs to market participants and investors.

By the end of this year corporates, including institutional investors, have to obtain this UID. Individual investors have to obtain it next year.

Every entity obtaining the unique identification number under the MAPIN database will have one identification number (unique) in the system.

The unique number is permanent and does not change even if some attributes of the entity change (such as its Sebi registration number, address, etc). In case of individuals, as well, the number remains the same even if the individual changes the organisation he is associated with or the nature of his association. Clear so far?

The identification is based on what is called the biometric system -- that is a mix of physical and biological attributes of the individual.

So this includes fingerprints along with the photographs of the person.  Fingerprints are live scanned, photograph is captured and signature is scanned, as part of the application process.

Okay, so some of you may be alarmed at the prospect of being finger-printed since that smacks of something criminal. This is not the case.

The fingerprinting is essential as a safeguard so that there is nobody who can impersonate you or the other way around. Anyway if you are a genuine investor with good intentions being finger-printed should not really pose any problems.

Now Sebi has appointed the National Securities Depository Ltd for creating and maintaining the MAPIN database.

NSDL in its turn has appointed the Points of Service agents who will provide the application forms for registration, accept application forms and collect bio-metric details such as fingerprints of the applicants.

Details of the POS, applications forms and so on will be available at the sites www.sebi.gov.in or www.nsdl.co.in or https://mapin.nsdl.com

The POS will set up camp offices at various locations in each state to provide the required service. Camping details will be published through different channels such as website, brokers' offices, and so on from time to time. In fact your own broker will also have the requisite and should be able to help you with this.

Application forms, along with a demand draft of Rs 300 as registration fees, may be submitted to these POSs to obtain the identification number. Individuals have to personally visit the designated POS office in their region and provide their fingerprint during registration.

The identity cards will be issued to the applicants within two weeks of submission of application.

The process of allotting unique identification number at full scale has already started from December 1, 2003. Rest assured even corporate honchos, and chief executives have to get this UID.

Investors can view basic information of an intermediary and whether the intermediary is facing any disciplinary action from the MAPIN data-base, which is available on the NSDL site.

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