PASS Securities Operations and Risk Management Examination Difficulty: Beginner 2 Questions   5 min read
📌 Chapter 7.1 — INTRODUCTION

Consider a situation where a client approaches your firm claiming that a trade error occurred eighteen months ago, resulting in an incorrect debit to their ledger. As an operations professional, your first instinct might be to pull up the digital logs and begin an investigation to resolve the issue. However, you must immediately cross-reference the date of this alleged incident with current regulatory timelines.

SEBI has established a clear boundary for grievances; if the cause of action is more than one year old, the complaint is essentially time-barred under the SCORES framework.

This one-year limitation period is not merely a bureaucratic hurdle but a fundamental pillar of market stability and operational efficiency. When an investor identifies a discrepancy, they are expected to act with reasonable diligence by reporting it within twelve months from the date they became aware, or should have been aware, of the issue. For the firm, this creates a defined horizon for record retention and evidence management.

If you are handling a client’s claim, you must verify the exact date of the cause of action—such as the date of a failed trade settlement or an incorrect contract note issuance—to determine if the complaint is even eligible for the SCORES platform.

In practice, this timeline influences how you manage client expectations and internal documentation. If a client approaches you with a complaint from two years ago, you are not obligated to route it through the formal SCORES portal, as the system will likely reject it for being outside the permissible window. Instead, you should explain the regulatory standing calmly and document the internal rejection clearly, ensuring you maintain the original records of the trade for the statutory period required by SEBI.

This keeps your firm’s compliance posture firm while preventing the escalation of invalid or stale grievances into your active surveillance metrics.

Ultimately, understanding the one-year limitation protects your operational workflow from being cluttered by legacy disputes that lack legal standing under the current grievance redressal mechanisms. By maintaining a strict adherence to these timelines, you ensure that only actionable and relevant issues enter the formal dispute resolution pipeline. This focus allows your team to dedicate resources to genuine, contemporary problems, thereby maintaining the trust and operational integrity that define a well-regulated brokerage house.

Nuance

⚠️ Nuance
Candidates often confuse the one-year limitation for filing a grievance with the seven-year requirement for maintaining physical or electronic books of accounts. While you must keep records for seven years, that length of time does not grant an investor an indefinite window to lodge a formal grievance. Always distinguish between the firm’s obligation to store data for audit purposes and the investor’s window of opportunity to initiate a regulatory complaint.

Check Your Understanding

Practice Question 1

An investor contacts your brokerage firm today regarding a disputed margin call that occurred 14 months ago. They demand that the issue be resolved through the SCORES platform. How should the compliance officer proceed?

Practice Question 2

Under the current SEBI guidelines, what is the primary purpose of the one-year limitation period for filing complaints on SCORES?

This is a companion read for Section 7.1 — INTRODUCTION from PASS Securities Operations and Risk Management Examination by Akhilesh Gururani, available on Amazon Kindle.

Copyright © 2026 `Akhilesh Gururani. All rights reserved.