Publication through governed eligibility, not open listing

Why does the gate come before the feature?

Because an open strategy marketplace is a demonstrated regulatory hazard for the broker, not for the platform. In March 2026 SEBI penalised a group of stockbrokers for remaining API-integrated with a platform whose marketplace hosted strategies advertising returns, and expressly rejected the defence that the broker had merely provided neutral execution infrastructure.

The consequence for a vendor conversation is direct: a vendor's marketplace policy is part of the broker's compliance surface. So the first thing this page states is who may publish, and the answer is a narrow, verifiable category rather than any user with a strategy.

Who can publish?

Only an adviser account that passes the configured document review and role-activation workflow can publish an eligible Indian-market strategy. Registration alone does not create publication authority.

Broker or admin teams create the Research Analyst profile and capture declarations, review the required registration and supporting documents, and activate the role on an eligible verified account with an audit event attached. Access can subsequently be suspended, rejected or deactivated, and that reversibility is part of the control rather than an afterthought.

The governed publication sequence

What does a listing have to carry?

Four things: publisher identity with verification state, strategy identity including access model and disclosure class, evidence that pairs any observed return with drawdown and risk measures, and deployment fit covering capital, account, segment, connector and tenant policy.

Evidence is the field where marketplaces usually fail. Showing a return without the drawdown beside it is how a discovery surface becomes a performance advertisement, and that transition is precisely what the March orders concerned. Risk measures, trade quality, history and review status travel with the figure or the figure does not appear.

Is this copy trading?

No. It is discovery, and the product states the distinction plainly: users should review the rules and evidence, paper-observe the strategy, assess capital and risk, and confirm connector eligibility before any deployment.

There is no one-click follow, no automatic capital allocation and no implication that a listing constitutes advice. Broker or tenant policy sets publisher roles, asset coverage, eligibility, access and suspension, and remains authoritative throughout.

A note on ranked discovery, stated plainly

Performance-ordered discovery is the single highest-risk surface in this feature, and it is the one a broker should decide about deliberately rather than inherit. The March 2026 adjudication orders concerned brokers integrated with a platform whose marketplace hosted strategies advertising returns. So a leaderboard, a trending rail or a return-ranked list is not a neutral UI choice for a regulated broker.

The platform is capable of presenting ranked surfaces, and displays observed return alongside risk, minimum capital and Sharpe where it does. That is a factual description of the capability rather than a recommendation to enable it.

Our position: for a bank-owned or full-service broker selling into a compliance-reviewed environment, the defensible configuration leads with the verified-publisher gate, the rules and the risk context, and treats return-ranked ordering as something to scope with your own compliance function before it reaches end clients. We would rather have that conversation during scoping than have it discovered in a review.

Broker or tenant policy sets publisher roles, asset coverage, eligibility, access models and suspension, so the controls to make that decision exist. Which surfaces a specific deployment exposes is established during technical discovery.

What does the broker keep control of?

Everything that determines exposure: plan, asset, approval and deployment controls around marketplace access, plus the ability to suspend a publisher or withdraw a listing.

That control is the reason this feature can exist inside a regulated broker's product at all. A marketplace the broker cannot switch off, scope, or reverse would be a liability the framework places squarely on the broker, and no compliance function should accept it.

How a listing is filtered and evaluated

Discovery, not blind following. The prerequireds are stated in the product rather than assumed.

What does a user have to do before deploying a listed strategy?

Review the rules and the evidence, paper-observe the strategy, assess capital and risk, and confirm connector eligibility. The product presents those as prerequireds rather than as advice.

There is no one-click follow and no automatic capital allocation. That is a deliberate product constraint rather than a missing feature: the moment a discovery surface can allocate capital on a listing, it stops being discovery and becomes something a broker's compliance function has to defend as advice.

What can a broker switch off?

Publisher roles, asset coverage, eligibility, access models and individual listings, plus the RA role itself, which can be suspended or deactivated with the action recorded.

A marketplace a broker cannot scope, reverse or switch off would place a liability on the broker that the framework already assigns them, with none of the control. The reversibility is what makes the feature approvable, so it is described here as a control rather than as an administrative detail.