Online BO account opening within months

Opening capital market investment accounts, popularly called beneficiary owners or BO accounts, is likely to be a reality within a few months, said the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) Officials.

Under its masterplan for a completely digitized capital market, the market regulator is pushing Central Depository Bangladesh Limited (CDBL) to introduce an online platform which will enable any investor from any corner of the globe to open a BO account to invest in Bangladesh capital market.

CDBL officials presented their planned module of the desired platform before BSEC officials on Wednesday.

According to the plan, CDBL site will host a page that would work as the gateway to open a BO account. All the brokers also would share the page link in their own websites.

Investors have to fill the online form with their national identity card number and registered mobile phone number and the state database would automatically fill up other information like permanent address, present address, name of parents.

An integration with the banking system database may connect the applicants' bank account details and the investors will need to choose among their bank accounts to link with the BO account in case of multiple bank accounts.

If everything goes right within a few months we are going to see BO accounts opening completely online.

BSEC, under its current capital market development drive, is inspiring investment flow to the listed securities both from home and abroad alongside its efforts for increasing the destination of the funds in terms of diversity, quantity and quality of listed scrips.

There had been more than 32 lakh BO accounts even four-five years ago, which drastically came down below 25 lakh in recent years due to adverse market conditions and investors' reduced confidence.

However, appointment of new top officials at BSEC, a secondary market bounce back  and large initial public offering from telecom operator Robi attracted more than a lakh investors in the market that pushed the number of operable BO accounts to 25.23 lakh currently.