Unusual transactions on my ICICIDirect account (Resolved)

I use ICICIDirect as my stock-broker, and recently received a mail from BSE indicating a negative balance of 1.6 lakhs.

I am a buy-and-hold investor, and only do delivery-based transactions. Never used F&O or margin trading. The strange thing is:

  • There never should have been a negative balance, because ICICI blocks cash before it allows a Buy order.
  • Its been many months since I did any transaction through BSE.

Looking through my past transactions, I found one with a matching amount:

It seems that ICICI used the cash float from my NSE transactions for some invisible transaction on BSE. The problem is that they did it under my account and I am being held liable for transactions I cannot see and never authorized.

I forwarded the email to headservicequality@icicidirect (mentioned in BSE’s mail) last Friday, and sent a reminder today early morning. I also contacted my relationship manager and the compliance officer at ICICI yesterday. It’s been atleast two full working days and I have not heard back from anyone.

What are the options open to me? Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

post your complaint here to start with

https://scores.gov.in/scores/Welcome.html

3 Likes

i also received similar message and checked with ICICI
since there were holidays balance pending msg was sent to all

Even I have received these msgs., not only for ICICI direct., but for my account in Kotak securities too.

I have not gone through them completely., but it seems these are being sent by BSE & NSE.

Even i have received this message from BSE for iCICI Direct account. It appear like some change in regulation in terms of reporting standard through exchange side or misuse of client fund for some other purpose to manage liquidity condition. Most brokerages have too many terms & conditions and they expect client to accept those to provide services.

Even I have received…using kotak securities… Net balance across exchanges is not negative though… It’s positive… About 1.56 lac… It’s some kind of juggling… My ledger seems fine though.

Same here… Received negative balance of about 5k on ICICIDirect and positive balance of 2.37 lahks on Zerodha.

It must be due to segment reporting, suppose i buy the shares from BSE , but when i issue the cheque the broker must have credit NSE/CM settlement instead of BSE/CM settlement of funds, so debit balance likely to remain in BSE/CM segment ledger account maintained by the broker.

Nothing to be worried of i believe. Else you can advise your broker to transfer the balance to another ledger where -ve balance is showing by way of JV.

Amit

So I rechecked my transaction history. The last time I did any transaction on BSE was over 2 years back.

I also initially assumed it was some complication related to settlement issues, but ICICI has refused to respond to any of my emails - 3 different people. I have sent 4 emails so far to ICICI. They are usually far more responsive.

Anyway I have contacted both BSE and created a complaint on SCORES. If it’s my own misunderstanding/stupidity I hope someone just tells me that.

The BSE balance does show 0 in your statement. The negative balance is across exchanges (so it should be for NSE). I guess the amount would be settled.
I had received a similar statement but balance was shown as 0. I had not done any transaction recently.

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I understand the negative balance to involve some transaction in BSE (involving transfer from NSE to BSE). I have not authorized any such transaction in my account. If it was ICICI using the “cash float” it should have been through their own private account. This is exactly my problem - some transaction that I cannot see has happened in my account to explain the negative balance at BSE.

@vml I also received similar messages from BSE on 31st July. But I was able to tally this. It is because of transaction on NSE I did on 31st July. :slight_smile: . Though ICICI blocks the amount they may not be crediting it to exchange on the same day.

So in your case also, if you notice the amount tally’s with your transaction on NSE on 31st July.

Looks like a harmless messaging glitch which all of us faced.

SCORES was amazing. I registered a complaint in the morning and I got a call from a BSE representative just a few minutes back explaining the transaction.

The “Net across exchanges” is a combined outstanding balance from both exchanges put together. It doesn’t matter whether the mail comes from BSE or NSE. My misunderstanding was that I took the amount to indicate a transfer between NSE to BSE.

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Hi,

I had a query regarding the same notification by BSE. In one of my accounts with MOSL it shows Total number of ISINs=51 and also a number in Total Quantity of securities. However, in 2 of my other accounts in the family with Religare the two columns show 0. Both the Religare accounts also hold some shares. Please can anybody advise what can be the reason that MOSL accounts shows a value for these two columns while the other two don’t although I have holdings in all 3 accounts.

Regards
Kapil

@kooper2000

I think you might have done some trading activity in your MOSL account, and the securities were being settled around that date. You should call up your MOSL representative for clarification.

http://www.sebi.gov.in/legal/circulars/sep-2016/enhanced-supervision-of-stock-brokers-and-depository-participants_33334.html is the SEBI circular mentioned in the e-mail. Page 24 is a summary of the entries in the email.

Hi Vimal,
Page 24 of the circular just says ‘End of day securities balances (as on last trading day of the month) consolidated ISIN wise (i.e., total number of ISINs and numberof securities across all ISINs)’. As I do not trade, I more or less buy and hold for many years this is near about the total ISIN’s in my account purchased since 1996. My query is:

  • Does this figure shows the details from my DP account? In that case the other 2 notifications should also show a number in these two columns rather than zero as the other two accounts do have few ISINs in their DP account.

So there is no question of settlement around that day for all those ISINs. Please advice.

Regards
Kapil

Hi Kapil,
I expected those entries to be zero if you have not done any transactions. I understood those entries to indicate transactions that are in the process of settlement - either funds or securities, or pledges being held. If that does not match with your transaction history, then you should definitely check with MOSL. If they don’t give a convincing response, then follow up with SCORES - register a complaint and attach a document (PDF/Word) with all relevant proofs/screenshots.

Of course, my understanding could be wrong, and it will help if you can share any clarification you receive from your broker/SEBI.

Edit: BTW, You mentioned that the number of ISIN’s match with your account, but does the number of securities match with the total number of shares that you have?

I too received the BSE mail where it give cash balance correctly. But the no. of shares and no. of ISINs is shown as zero even though I have shares in my account (but no transaction in the last few months). I contacted my broker, Funds India, and asked them about the zero, and they said the mail is only for cash balance. I still don’t understand it.

@Murali_Krishnan

Your DP account holds your shares while the stock-exchange (BSE/NSE) is only used for transactions. To confirm your current share holdings, search for the last email you got from NSDL or CDSL. If I conduct any stock market transaction, I get a Consolidated Account statement (CAS) email from NSDL/CDSL for that month.

For the BSE email, a zero entry for shares/ISIN makes sense in your case. A transaction settlement takes T+2 days, so unless you had any transaction just around that date the email refers to, you shouldn’t have a balance with the stock exchange.

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I have a different problem friends. I bought Aditya Birla Nuvo long back but since there was merger of AB Nuvo with Grasim, the AB Nuvo shares in my portfolio (in ICICI Direct) is kind of locked. I am not able to sell it. Moreover the price of it shows 9.90 Rs in NSE and 1800+ in BSE.

On the other hand, when I go to demat allocation page, I can see 30 shares of Grasim and 42 shares of Aditya Birla capital which I never bought (May be it was after the merger allocated to me) but I cannot see these two in my portfolio page.

Kindly help.