Demat Account is an account that is used to hold shares and securities in electronic format. The full form of Demat account is a dematerialised account. The purpose of opening a Demat account is to hold shares that have been bought or dematerialised (converted from physical to electronic shares), thus making share trading easy for the users during online trading.
In India, depositories such as NSDL and CDSL provide Demat account services. Intermediaries, depository participants or stockbrokers facilitate these services. Each intermediary may have Demat account charges that vary as per volume held in the account, type of subscription, and terms and conditions between a depository and a stockbroker.
What is Demat account?
A Demat Account or Dematerialised Account provides the facility of holding shares and securities in an electronic format. During online trading, shares are bought and held in a Demat Account, thus, facilitating easy trade for the users. A Demat Account holds all the investments an individual makes in shares, government securities, exchange-traded funds, bonds and mutual funds in one place.
What is dematerialisation?
Dematerialisation is the process of converting the physical share certificates into electronic form, which is a lot easier to maintain and is accessible from anywhere throughout the world. An investor who wants to trade online needs to open a Demat with a Depository Participant (DP). The purpose of dematerialisation is to eliminate the need for the investor to hold physical share certificates and facilitating a seamless tracking and monitoring of holdings.
Types of Broker
There are mainly two types of brokers
- Full service broker – Full-service (Full-price) brokers are the traditional broker’s who offers almost all kind of investment options and advisory to its customers. This includes trading in stock (equity), Future & Options, commodities and currency derivatives, Investment in Mutual Funds, IPO’s, Fixed Deposits and Bonds, Life Insurance and General Insurance. They also provide Wealth Management and Investment Planning services to individual as well as corporate customers. Full Service Brokers have their own research teams which helps the customer in their financial planning.
- Discount broker – Discount brokers provide less number of services but at a much cheaper price. They offer no-frill services and specialized into few investment options. Discount brokers are good for ‘do-it-yourself’ kind of investors. While the services offered by them varies from broker to broker, many of the discount stock brokers do not provide services like stock research, investment in IPO’s, Mutual Funds, FD’s, Bonds and NCD’s. They generally do not have their own research teams and thus do not provide wealth management related services. There are two sub categories of discount brokers in India by the way they charge the brokerage; Brokers charging Fixed Price per Trade and Brokers charging Fixed Monthly Fees for unlimited Trades.
If you are interested in opening demat account, you can visit one of the below link and signup:
ICICI Direct – Best Full Service Broker
Groww – Discount broker with Best User Interface (UI) and Nil AMC