KARACHI, Oct. 21 (Focus Pakistan) — A proposed shake-up of SECP broker rules could end immediate stock exchange alerts when directors or major shareholders of Pakistani brokerages trade shares through other brokers. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) now wants to cut that reporting link, potentially changing how quickly the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) receives details of these transactions.
Directors and major shareholders of a brokerage would also get seven working days, not two, to put each trade on paper. Banks, insurers and a few other financial firms that hold broker shares could skip the rule entirely.
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) notice, S.R.O. 1863(I)/2026, bears an Oct. 13 date. It went online Oct. 20. Comments stay open for two weeks. The current rules remain in force until SECP notifies a final version.
How The New SECP Broker Rules Work
The clause SECP wants to change is Regulation 16(7) of the brokers’ licensing rules, which date back to 2016. It lets a brokerage’s directors and substantial shareholders trade through other brokers, but only on conditions. They need a one-time written approval from their own firm. After each trade, they hand the details to the company secretary the same day and follow up in writing within two days. The secretary then has to forward everything to the exchange immediately.
The draft removes that final step.
PSX took the existing requirement seriously enough to circulate the regulation’s text along with a standard template that company secretaries use to report these trades. If the draft passes unchanged, that template would lose its purpose.
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Seven Days, Not two
Under the proposal, insiders would no longer need to attach a copy of the contract note from the broker that executed the deal. The written record would fall due within seven working days.
One duty survives. Directors and substantial shareholders would still have to tell their own company secretary on the day they trade.
So the information still reaches someone inside the firm on the day of the trade. What changes is the automatic route that sends those details from the brokerage to the stock exchange.
SECP wants to lift Regulation 16(7) entirely for certain institutional shareholders: banks, development finance institutions, non-banking finance companies and insurers.
The draft extends the same relief to parent brokerages that own wholly owned subsidiaries offering Shariah-compliant brokerage.
None of these institutions would escape Pakistan’s wider securities laws. They would still answer to insider-trading and market-conduct rules. Only this one brokerage reporting duty would go.
A Familiar Direction
SECP has eased rules for brokers before. In 2018, it amended the same regulations, scrapping broker categories and the agent system in a package it pitched as cutting regulatory burden.
This draft points the same way. Brokers would file less paperwork, on longer deadlines, with fewer shareholders inside the net.
It also leaves questions open. The longer filing window could delay supporting documentation, while removing the automatic PSX alert could reduce the exchange’s immediate visibility under this provision.
A separate disclosure track exists for some firms, though it covers less ground. Brokerages listed on PSX must report when directors or substantial shareholders trade in the brokerage’s own shares. AKD Securities, for example, has filed such trades with the exchange under clause 5.6.4 of the PSX regulations. That obligation covers dealings in the listed brokerage’s stock. Regulation 16(7) reaches further, to the trades insiders place through other brokers.
The draft doesn’t say regulators would lose sight of these trades. It doesn’t explain how they would keep it either.
Comments close in early November. Then SECP has to decide whether a faster, lighter rulebook is worth one fewer alarm bell at the exchange.
