Branch officers of a DP will be first explained in detail the nuances of handling a client. This would include being well versed in answering questions most frequently asked by investors.

Apart from this, branches will be informed about the procedures that can be adopted and the care that they need to take in ensuring that a demat request of an investor does not come back to the DP for lack of adequate details. This only derails the smooth process of dematerialisation and NSDL feels that this is intolerable. After the session, all branch officers will be subjected to a testwhich will seek to ascertain the extent to which they are now prepared in handling clients.

The result of the test can act as a feedback to the organisation. Over a period of time, the depository might well adopt a certification programme which will make it mandatory on a branch officer to clear a certification test before servicing investors. This could be modelled on the one conducted by the National Stock Exchange (NSE) for derivative traders. The entire testing process there is automated. Incidentally, NSE and NSDL have the same V-Sat network. With the depository growing at a rapid pace and the market expected to move entirely to the demat regime in about a year's time from now, it is imperative that the persons who are actually dealing with investors know exactly what they are doing.

Depository service is being offered in over 300 towns and cities and this figure is only expected to swell as investors from smaller places find it easier to trade through the depository.

The focus of the depositoryhas therefore shifted from empowering the branches at the metro cities to all the other centres. "A branch at a metro as well as the investor there is far more informed of the practices that are prevalent. We have to take care to see that the same practices are adopted by DPs in all other centres as well. The last thing we want is an investor going away from a DP disillusioned," said NSDL vice-president T Koshy.

With investors flocking to the depository and over 5,000 fresh accounts being opened every week, several DPs have been taken by surprise and are finding it difficult to service this huge rush.

While several of them, especially the broker DPs, have geared up to face the challenge, an equal number of the 65-and-odd DPs, including some bank DPs, are finding it difficult to handle so many accounts and are thus not expanding rapidly to other centres.

With the secondary and primary markets expected to be in demat mode shortly, it is felt that there is an urgent need to further improve the performanceof DPs in servicing investors.

NSDL has given two options to DPs. They could either attend a collective workshop for DPs in a particular centre or get one exclusively organised for themselves with assistance from NSDL.