The Nepal Stock Exchange (Nepse) from Sunday permitted individual stock investors to access its platform using their personal ID and password and conduct online trading without having to go through a broker.

On November 6, Nepse launched a full-fledged online system providing access to the general public, but individual investors were not able to use it due to a number of technical glitches, forcing them to go to their brokers to buy and sell shares. 

Nepse claimed that it had fixed all the technical problems. “We have removed 

the problems and have started issuing user IDs and passwords to individual investors through the concerned brokering firms,” said General Manager Chandra Singh Saud.

As per Nepse, around 1.3 million investors have opened demat accounts; and among them, 200,000 have updated their Know Your Customer with their latest details. About 6,000 investors still have multiple depository participant IDs. 

“There is still some problem in integrating such demat accounts with the clearing banks, particularly of those investors who have been operating more than two demat accounts,” said Saud. 

He added that the system might not register transaction orders in such cases. 

“We have asked stockbrokers to identify such clients to cancel the extra demat accounts.”

Four commercial banks—Nepal Investment Bank, Global IME Bank, Prabhu Bank and Siddhartha Bank—have obtained licences to operate as clearing banks. 

Investors who are not acquainted with computer-based systems might have difficulty carrying out stock transactions. In such cases, they can use the services of stockbrokers, according to Nepse. Under the semi-automated system that was in place previously, investors were able to observe only the status of their trading, and they could not place an order to buy or sell shares.

Santosh Mainali, managing director of Secured Securities, said stockbrokers had started providing login services to their clients after Nepse sorted out most of the problems appearing in the new system.

Chhote Lal Rauniyar, vice-president of the Nepal Investors’ Forum, stressed 

the need to increase awareness among investors about properly handling the system to get the maximum benefit out of it.