SEBI’s Savings Data Revision Reveals Bigger Retail Participation

Numbers matter in economics, but only as much as the method behind them. For years, India's national savings data, the kind that feeds into GDP calculations and shapes public policy was built partly on estimates. SEBI, in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), has now replaced those estimates with actual, granular data. The result is a materially different picture of how Indian households save, and a meaningfully higher savings ratio for the country.

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What Was Being Missed Earlier?

The old methodology was not wrong by design, it was simply limited by the data available at the time. RBI and MoSPI relied on estimations for household savings flowing through the securities market. Specifically, 35% of public and rights issuances in equity and 40% of public issuances in corporate debt were treated as household savings. Mutual fund investment data was sourced from SEBI and AMFI, but it covered only a slice of what households were actually doing in the market.

Several channels were left out entirely. Private placements of equity, preferential allotments, secondary market transactions, and new-age instruments like Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs) were not counted. Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISHs) covering trusts, NGOs, charities, and associations — were also excluded from the investor category.

Given how rapidly India's capital markets have grown since the post-Covid period, these omissions had started to add up.

What The New Methodology Covers?

The revised approach moves away from broad percentage-based estimates and toward actual data sourced directly from depositories, stock exchanges, and AMFI. It now captures household savings across a wider range of instruments and channels: IPOs, FPOs, rights issuances, preferential allotments, OFS through stock exchanges, private placements of corporate bonds, municipal bonds, securitised debt instruments, REITs, InvITs, mutual funds (including ETFs), and secondary market net investments across all segments.

NPISHs have also been brought into the investor category, recognising that entities like trusts and societies do channel funds into the securities market on behalf of households.

The data sources are now more direct. For equity, depositories track flows through public, rights and preferential issues, while NSE and BSE provide OFS data. For debt and REITs and InvITs, depositories again serve as the primary source. AMFI continues to supply mutual fund data. Secondary market data comes from stock exchanges.

Revised Data Adds ₹1.48 Lakh Crore To Household Savings

For context, under the earlier methodology, the 2024-25 figure for household savings via securities markets would have been ₹5,42,756 crore; a gap of over ₹1.48 lakh crore from the revised number.

Of the ₹6,90,963 crore invested in 2024-25, the bulk flowed through primary markets (₹6,31,510 crore), with mutual funds alone accounting for ₹5,12,765 crore. Secondary market flows contributed ₹59,452 crore.

Under the revised methodology, the rate of gross savings to GDP for FY2024-25 has increased to 34.94%, which would have been 34.47% if the old methodology had continued, a difference of 47 basis points. Net household financial savings also improved to 7.10% of GDP, up from the former estimate of 6.63%.

These may seem like incremental shifts, but at the scale of India's GDP, 47 basis points is not a rounding error. It represents a meaningful upward revision in how much the country is actually saving.

A Shift Away From Gold And Property

What makes this revision particularly interesting is what it reveals about the changing behaviour of Indian households. Physical assets like gold and real estate have historically dominated household savings. Under the old base year data (2011-12), physical savings made up 72% of household savings in 2023-24, with net financial savings at just 28%. The new data for 2024-25 shows financial savings rising to 33%, with physical savings at 67%. It is a gradual but visible tilt.

The use of policies by governments, including tax incentives, financial inclusion initiatives, and digital banking, have been mentioned as some of the reasons behind the trend. The increased accessibility to markets, mobile investments, and the influx of retail investors following the pandemic have all been contributing to making people enter the formal financial system.

Why Does The Revision Matters?

Essentially, the essence of this revision revolves around the quality of data. Projections are made where there is no information available, but these come with some degree of error. The changeover from projections to more precise data derived from depository and exchange sources allows for an accurate assessment of how people manage their finances.

The paper also flags a significant gap in how household financial assets are currently tracked from a stock perspective. While RBI provides data on household financial assets, coverage has historically been limited to mutual fund AUM held by individual investors. Under the revised methodology, the total stock of household assets in India's securities market stood at ₹141.34 lakh crore  at the end of FY2024-25, spanning mutual funds, equities, debt, REITs, InvITs, and AIFs. This is ₹100.05 lakh crore  higher than what the earlier methodology would have captured, a gap that underlines just how much individual wealth sitting in markets was being overlooked.

Conclusion

The point of this paper is clear: the Indian household sector has been saving more than was previously realized through official measures, and in a far wider range of ways. The important thing now is to measure that correctly.