ISLAMABAD: In order to dispose of pending appeals, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) Appellate Bench Registry has planned to fix appeals on a fortnightly basis.

According to the plan for early disposal of appeals released by the SECP, the Appellate Bench besides conducting hearings at the head office in Islamabad, in order to facilitate regulated entities, also conducts hearings through video conferencing from the Commission's CRO offices in Lahore and Karachi.

Due to the recent pandemic, the Appellate Bench Registry is also facilitating litigants to attend hearings through video conferencing app, Zoom.

With the appointment of more commissioners and availability of Appellate Benches, the issue of pendency of appeals is being resolved.

Between July 2019 and June 2020, the Appellate Bench disposed of 41 appeals and conducted 150 hearings.

The early hearing of appeals has been a demand of the regulated entities, and it is expected that by the end of the financial year 2020-21, the Appellate Bench shall clear the backlog of pending appeals.

In collaboration with the IS&T Department, the Appellate Bench Registry has put in place a database, which provides information on the status of pending appeals and appeals disposed of by the Appellate Bench, and all the orders passed by the Appellate Bench are uploaded on the SECP website, the SECP added.

The SECP also claimed that it has launched Artificial Intelligence (AI) built Chatbot service, which is available 24/7 for the public. This initiative makes the SECP, the first public-sector organisation to implement an AI-driven Chatbot in Pakistan. With its inception, users can now get in touch and take response straightaway from the SECP website without any human intervention.

There are multiple initiatives which have been implemented in the domain of the ERP that involves implementation of provident fund application, promotion and performance management system, automation of internal requisition process, automated financial accounting for the STR invoice and payments, documents management portal for securities market and digitalization of filing of shareholders information for listed companies.

Also, Rules/Regulations Search Repository has been launched on the SECP website to facilitate users for efficient and quick search.

63 eServices processes have been made Cross Border Compliant.

Also, automation of the LLP registration and compliance and simplification of user registration, name reservation and company incorporation processes have been completed.

The SECP has also adopted Software Quality Assurance (QA) automation to increase applications speed, reliability and quality.

So far, multiple business processes in eServices and the SECP website have been tested through this tool.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020