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Compliance Officer
Yash is Sapphire's Compliance Officer. He writes about SEBI circulars, regulatory changes, and what compliance updates mean for everyday investors.
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Open free accountOn 26 February 2026, SEBI issued Circular HO/(79)2026-MIRSD-PODMMC - the "social media disclosure" circular - which becomes effective from 1 May 2026. It's a short circular but a meaningful one for how registered intermediaries (stock brokers, MFDs, RAs, IAs) are allowed to communicate on Instagram, X, LinkedIn, YouTube and Telegram.
This post explains, in plain English, what changed and what it should look like from the investor's side.
Three things, taken together:
A consolidated registrations page. Every SEBI-registered intermediary must publish, on its own website, a single page listing every registration the entity holds - SEBI registration number, exchange memberships, AMFI ARN if applicable, the principal AMC entities it distributes for, the compliance officer's contact details.
Bio links from social handles. Every official social-media handle of the intermediary must link to that page from its profile bio. Not buried inside individual posts - in the bio, the place every visitor sees first.
Per-post capacity disclosure. Where the social content is in a SEBI-registered capacity (e.g. an MFD talking about mutual funds; a stock broker doing equity research), the post itself should make that capacity explicit - not just imply it from the brand association.
The Indian retail investor base has grown roughly 4x since 2020. A lot of that growth has happened through Instagram reels, X threads, and YouTube videos - formats that move fast and don't naturally surface regulatory context.
SEBI's concern, fairly stated: if a SEBI-registered Mutual Fund Distributor (MFD) posts about a specific equity, viewers may reasonably infer that the post is being made in the person's regulated capacity, when in fact MFDs are not registered to give equity advice. The same person speaking about MFs is operating under one set of regulations and disclosure obligations; speaking about stocks they're operating under different (or no) regulatory framework.
The new rule forces the speaker to make the capacity explicit, and gives any viewer one click to verify the registrations are real.
You can see our implementation live at /regulatory-disclosures. The page lists:
INZ000329823)Our Instagram / X / LinkedIn / YouTube bios link directly to this page. Posts about stocks specifically note "as a SEBI-registered stock broker"; posts about mutual funds note "as an AMFI-registered Mutual Fund Distributor".
When you scroll through any financial-content account on Indian Instagram, you can now apply a simple checklist:
Two minutes of due diligence on the disclosure page makes the difference between content backed by regulatory accountability and content that just looks the part.
Under SEBI's broader content rules - not just this circular - a registered intermediary cannot:
If you see any account whose content does these things, the SEBI complaints portal - SCORES, at scores.sebi.gov.in - is the right channel. Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) at smartodr.in handles broker-specific grievances.
Note: This post explains the circular as we understand it. For the authoritative text, please refer to the circular itself on sebi.gov.in. If you have questions about Sapphire's compliance with the circular, write to me at compliance@sapphirebroking.com.