Demat Account

You might have heard the word `Demat Account’ frequently in the past few years. If you’ve wondered what is Demat Account, let’s explain it for you.

A Demat Account is a bit like a bank account for your share certificates and other securities that are held in an electronic format. Demat Account is short for dematerialisation account and makes the process of holding investments like shares, bonds, government securities, Mutual Funds, Insurance and ETFs easier, doing away the hassles of physical handling and maintenance of paper shares and related documents.

To understand Demat Account meaning, let’s use an example. Let’s say you want to purchase the shares of Company X. When you buy those shares, they will have to be transferred in your name. In earlier times, you got physical shares certificates from the exchange with your name on it. This, as you can imagine, involved tonnes of paperwork. Each time a share was bought and sold, a certificate had to be created. To do away with this paperwork, India introduced the Demat Account system in 1996 for trades on NSE.

Today, there’s no paperwork involved, and physical certificates are no longer issued. So when you buy shares of Company X, all you get is an entry in electronic form, in your Demat Account. So this is what is Demat Account.

Today if you want to trade/invest in the stock market (NSE & BSE) or other securities, having a Demat Account is a must. Your Demat Account number is compulsory for electronic settlements of the trades and transactions you do.

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