Kotak Securities Referral Code

The offer this page carried — up to ₹500 plus 10% of brokerage — is half current and half prohibited. Knowing which half saves you counting on money that cannot be paid.

Kotak Securities' referral has been widely advertised as up to ₹500 plus 10% of the brokerage generated by the people you refer. The second component can no longer be paid to an ordinary referrer.

An NSE circular dated 14 August 2024 prohibited brokers from paying referral commission to anyone not registered as an Authorised Person of the trading member, appointed with prior approval from the exchange. Brokerage revenue sharing is squarely within that prohibition, and the industry responded within weeks — Zerodha ended its 10% share on 25 August 2024, Angel One stopped sharing brokerage revenue from 1 September 2024, and most leading brokerages discontinued referral incentives.

That leaves the flat component. A fixed reward for a successful signup remains permissible, and where a broker runs one it is the figure that actually applies. Check what is showing in your own Kotak Securities account rather than relying on any published number, because the amounts moved when the structures changed.

Two points specific to a bank-owned broker are worth adding. First, account opening at a bank-linked broker often involves the wider banking relationship, and referral conditions may attach to that rather than only to the trading account — read what the current programme requires. Second, activation conditions are set by the broker on top of the regulatory position, so an account that opens but is never funded or traded commonly fails to qualify regardless of what the headline says.

If a genuine share of brokerage is what you are after, the compliant structure is an Authorised Person appointment. That is a regulated business relationship with obligations, not a link — which is precisely the point of the rule. The exchange's concern was that unregistered individuals introducing clients into trading accounts could facilitate activity contrary to investors' interests, and paying a percentage of trading activity creates a direct incentive to encourage trading.