mumbai to bring down the overall cost of transaction in the stock market markets regulator sebi on saturday reduced its turnover fees by 25 to rs 15 per rs 1 crore worth of turnover from rs 20 earlierthe sebi decision could lead to lower trading costs for large institutional investors like insurance companies foreign investors and mutual funds and also high networth investors dealers said sebis move will complement the governments ease of doing business initiatives since the reduction in fees will be beneficial to large institutional investorssebis turnover fees is part of the fee that investors pay to the exchanges through their brokers for trading on their platforms and the exchanges in turn pass it on to the regulator it also charges a rs 50000 annual fee from the brokers in fiscal 2016 the aggregate collection of fees under these two heads was rs 342 crore sebi annual report showed this reduction in cost of transactions will also promote the development of securities market a sebi release saidsebi also allowed mutual funds to invest in real estate investment trusts reits and infrastructure investment trusts invits which will give a boost to these new products which will soon be introduced to indian investorson saturday sebi board also allowed mutual fund industry to have brand ambassadors it however said that celebrity endorsements will be allowed at the industry level but individual fund houses cant have a brand ambassador for their products also the fund industry will have to take sebis permission before appointing a celebrity to endorse funds on april 9 2016 toi had reported that the market regulator was discussing such a plancurrently sebi now allows fund houses to charge investors 2 paise for every rs 100 invested through mutual funds which goes into a corpus that is used for investor education of this 1 paise is given to industry trade body amfi to spread awareness about the fund industrylast year amfi had about rs 140 crore which is expected to rise to about rs 175 crore this year top officials believe amfi will use part of this corpus to bring in brand ambassadors for the fund industry