Stock investors can now crosscheck portfolios

Stock investors now can crosscheck their investment portfolios with Central Depository Bangladesh Limited (CDBL), the infrastructure backbone of the country's capital market.

To make this happen, CDBL on Sunday launched a monthly e-statement service as part of its effort to eliminate brokerage house-related irregularities. 

Under the service, the beneficiary owners' (BO) account holders will receive emails describing their investments on different stocks at the end of every month's first week so that they can identify if there is anything wrong at the brokerage firm's end. The service is free of cost.

CDBL came up with such an initiative following the identification of several irregularities, where stockbrokers defrauded investors by reporting fake cash and securities balances and pseudo buy-sell order execution updates.

"We noticed that several brokerage firms withdrew funds from their clients' accounts, using a variety of software in recent years. Investors were cheated there" said Professor Shibli Rubayat-Ul-Islam, chairman of the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC).

Hopefully, the service would protect investors from fraudulence, he said at the inaugural programme of the e-statement initiative in the capital.

"General people will not put their money in the capital market if their money remains unsafe," he said, adding that brokerage firms must raise confidence among their clients with providing the best services.

BSEC Commissioners Shaikh Shamsuddin Ahmed and Abdul Halim, CDBL Managing Director Shuvra Kanti Choudhury, among others, were present at the event.