SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions | SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth | SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Institutions: Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) | Ministry of Finance | Ministry of Corporate Affairs
At the 2025 Corporate Governance Summit, the Chairman of SEBI articulated a forward-looking vision for governance in the age of transparency, technology, and trust. Moving beyond compliance, the focus is on embedding governance as a strategic differentiator that drives sustainable growth, investor confidence, and ethical market behaviour.
Strategic Path Forward: Governance in the New Landscape
SEBI calls for boards and senior leaders to transform regulations from an obligation into a source of strategic advantage by focusing on substance over structure. Key areas of evolution include:
Culture and Conduct: Boards must view culture as an asset, monitoring and measuring its health through tools like employee feedback and whistle-blower activity. A standing Ethics Committee at the board level is suggested to act as an “early-warning mechanism”.
Digital Governance: Boards must urgently oversee digital risks, including data ethics, cyber resilience, and algorithmic fairness, as governance now spans from the boardroom to the cloud.
ESG Authenticity: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) must become core to governance—it must be authentic, tied to measurable outcomes, and subject to independent assurance, moving beyond mere branding.
Regulatory Partnership: Entities must embrace regulations as a partner, not a constraint. Open dialogue with regulators—sharing emerging risks and adopting best practices voluntarily—is necessary to build mutual confidence and a more predictable ecosystem.
The vision builds on SEBI’s earlier reforms that have steadily strengthened India’s governance framework, enhancing board independence and diversity, enforcing five-year renewals of special rights to curb perpetual control, elevating compliance officers to Key Managerial Personnel for direct accountability, and refining disclosure norms to prioritise context over volume—making transparency more meaningful and trust-driven.
The vision aligns with India’s Corporate Governance Framework 2025 and the broader goal of building trust-based, technology-enabled, and ethics-anchored capital markets. It also reinforces India’s positioning as a reliable investment destination by coupling innovation with institutional integrity.
Relevant Question for Policy Stakeholders:
How can India institutionalise this conviction-based governance model so that ethics, not enforcement, become the economy’s primary safeguard?
Follow the full update here: From Compliance to Conviction: SEBI’s Vision for Governance Reform