Sebi launches Demat 2.0 pilot for tokenised corporate bonds

Sebi has announced the successful launch of Demat 2.0, a pilot project for tokenised corporate bonds, marking a new step in the way bonds can be issued, held, traded and settled in India. The announcement was made jointly by RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and Sebi Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai.

The pilot uses distributed ledger technology and connects the bond market with the RBI’s wholesale central bank digital currency, or e-rupee.

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Demat 2.0 is a new market infrastructure built to test a different way of handling corporate bonds. Under the system, a bond is created as a digital token on a distributed ledger. This ledger is maintained simultaneously by market infrastructure institutions and is owned by depositories.

The key change is settlement. Demat 2.0 is connected to the RBI’s wholesale CBDC through the Unified Market Interface. This enables atomic settlement, where the bond and the money move at the same time.

This can reduce settlement risk because one side of the transaction does not remain pending after the other side is completed. In simple terms, the investor gets the bond and the issuer gets the money instantly.

Sebi said this technology can improve efficiency in securities market transactions. It can also automate asset servicing, including interest payments and redemption, through smart contracts. These are instructions written into the ledger that execute automatically.

At present, interest and redemption payments require the issuer or registrar to get the list of bondholders from depositories, calculate payments and route money separately through the banking channel. Under Demat 2.0, bondholder details are visible to authorised institutions on the shared ledger, and payments in e-rupee can reach bondholders’ CBDC wallets on the due date.

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Three companies have issued tokenised bonds so far, raising a total of Rs 1,025 crore. REC was the first issuer under the pilot. The public sector NBFC raised Rs 500 crore from 18 investors on September 7. L&T was the second issuer, raising Rs 500 crore from four investors on September 9. IIFL was the third issuer, raising Rs 25 crore from one investor on September 9.

The pilot is being taken forward in phases. The first phase is currently focused on issuances. Later phases will extend the system to buying and selling these bonds through existing RFQ platforms and eventually to retail investor access.

Sebi said Demat 2.0 can make corporate bond issuance and servicing faster, more efficient and less error-prone. For issuers, the biggest benefit is faster access to money. Funds can be received on the same day as bidding, compared with the earlier process that generally took two to three days after bidding.

For investors, the benefit is quicker access to funds in the secondary market. Sebi said funds can be received immediately in secondary market transactions, compared with the earlier timeline of two to three days. These funds can then be deployed elsewhere.

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