Demat Account Charges in India

I have often been asked questions like –

• Which is the Best Demat account?
• Which is the cheapest Demat account?
• What are different costs involved in opening & operating a Demat account?

Unfortunately like most Financial Products Demat Accounts too are complex and it’s almost impossible to compare two different service providers.

One account could be good for occasional investors while the other may be offering cheapest tariffs for high transaction people.

Before deciding for which Demat account to go for, you need to first determine your own requirement and then compare costs of different service providers for that segment. For details on this you can read my post “Demat Account – Which is the Best?”

In this post I would discuss about various charges in opening & operating a Demat account and then compare 12 major brokerage houses in terms of account opening, annual maintenance & brokerage charges.

Fees Involved:

There are three major charges usually levied on a demat account:

1. Account opening fee
2. Annual maintenance fee
3. Transaction fee

Account Opening Fee: As the name suggest Demat Account Providers charge this fee when opening your account for the first time. It’s a one time fee and may vary from 0 – Rs 750. But more often than not it’s waived off as special promotional offers, corporate discount, etc. You can also bargain with the agent to waive off this fee or to adjust it in annual maintenance or transaction fee.

Annual maintenance fee: It’s a recurring fee and service providers charge this at the start of every year to keep your Demat account running. It’s generally charged in advance and may vary from 0 – Rs 500.

Transaction fee: Also known as brokerage and is most important for traders and short term investors. This is charged when you do any transaction (buy/sell) from your account. It varies a lot depending on your transaction volume. Some has a flat fee as in per transaction basis while others charge it as a percentage of total transaction amounts. It can be charged on both sides (buy & sell both) or can be one sided (buy or sell). Most of the times there’s a minimum fee associated with each transaction which you should keep in mind. This fee can range from 0.02% of transaction amount for very high volume traders to 0.75% for low volume occasional investors. This fee can also dent your profitability especially if you are a trader. So you need to select an account which has low brokerage for your segment.

Other charges: Other than the above three fee, demat have other charges which is usually not incurred in regular course. It can be demat/remat fee – i.e. conversion of physical shares to demat form and vice versa. It can be flat fee per request or variable fee per certificate. It may vary from Rs. 15 – Rs. 100 per request.

There can be other charges too for failed instructions, certificate requests, pledging, address/ bank account change and many more hidden charges. You need to be very careful while opening an account and be very clear of all these charges.

Below is the table which compares 12 different Demat Accounts on the above stated fees.

HNI here means high volume traders, which you can think of as the best rates offered to any customer by the respective brokerage house. 

Let me know what Demat account you have and how you selected it in the first place, and what are your charges and fees. I may add the same in the above table.

Disclaimer: I realised that the Demat rates change very fast for the Brokerage houses which may make the above table dated. Also they have lot of combination of schemes suited for different clients. So its always advisable to do a market research yourself.