Choice Broking Excess Charges: A ₹5.43 Lakh Case Behind the Churning Pattern

Brokerage charges are just part of trading. Every time you buy or sell, your broker takes a small fee for their service. That’s standard practice, nothing to question on its own.

Things get problematic when the trading in your account starts happening mainly to generate those fees, not to grow your wealth, and a case against Choice Broking shows exactly what that looks like once it reaches a tribunal.

Her F&O account lost over ₹5.4 lakh while the broker earned roughly ₹1.5 lakh in brokerage off the very same trades, trades she says she never approved.

The arbitrator agreed, and this blog walks through why.

Choice Broking Excess Charges Pattern

Choice Broking is a full-service stockbroker offering trading and investment services across equities, derivatives, commodities, currencies, and mutual funds.

Unlike discount brokers built mainly around low-cost execution, full-service brokers typically layer in research reports, relationship managers, and advisory support, and that fee structure is normal across the industry.

The red flag appears when your account starts showing a volume of trades with no clear strategy behind them.

That’s usually a sign of relationship managers handling an account too aggressively, or a client pushed into a cycle of constant buying and selling that doesn’t match their actual financial goals.

Choice Broking Excess Charges Complaints

One of the clearest ways to see what’s actually happening is to look at the broader pattern in Choice Broking complaints overall, then narrow into how much of that traces back to charges specifically.

Worth being upfront about: NSE doesn’t maintain a dedicated “excess charges” or “churning” complaint category, so these figures reflect charges-related grievances identified within the broader complaint data, not an official classification. Treat them as approximate, not exact.

Even with that caveat, the pattern holds. By 2023-24, roughly half of all complaints traced back to churning-adjacent concerns, and that share stayed elevated through the two years that followed.

For a retail investor, this isn’t just a number on a page. When your account is constantly moving, brokerage costs climb fast. You might book a small profit on a trade, but once brokerage and transaction taxes are factored in, you can end up in the red anyway.

For new investors especially, constant “tips” can feel necessary to make money, when in reality the only party guaranteed to profit on every single trade is the broker.

That gap is exactly what erodes trust.

When Does Active Trading Become Churning?

High activity isn’t automatically a red flag. If you’re an intraday trader or a derivatives specialist, frequent transactions are simply part of the job.

But there’s a real line between active management and churning in share market, a practice where a broker or relationship manager executes excessive trades primarily to generate commission, not to benefit the client’s portfolio.

When a broker uses your account as a fee machine, a few specific patterns tend to show up:

1. Unauthorised Trading

The most serious of them. It’s exactly what it sounds like: trades happening in your account that you never approved. Sometimes a relationship manager places orders without telling you, or uses your login credentials to execute trades “on your behalf.”

If your contract notes show dozens of buy-and-sell orders for a stock you never touched, that’s unauthorised trading, not a coincidence.

2. Account Handling Issues

Often a distraction that makes the fee pattern harder to spot.

Messy ledger statements, confusing fee breakdowns, or delayed communication all make it difficult to track where your money is actually going.

Investors frequently only realise how much they’ve paid in fees when they sit down weeks later to audit their own account, and by then the pattern’s already cost them.

3. Manipulation Through Frequent Trading Advice

The psychological piece. Dozens of calls or messages a day urging you to jump in and out of stocks, buy at 10 AM, sell by 2 PM, buy the next morning again.

Unless something genuinely changes in the market, that “in and out” pattern usually does nothing but generate three sets of brokerage fees for the firm.

Over time, your costs rise while your actual profits don’t, or start shrinking outright.

Choice Broking Excess Charges Arbitration: Real Case Study

Numbers show a pattern. A decided case shows exactly how that pattern plays out when someone actually fights it.

This case was brought by Divya Bajaj, represented by her husband Vineet Vaibhav, against Choice Equity Broking Private Limited.

She sought a refund of ₹5.5 lakh for capital losses and ₹4.5 lakh to cover mental agony and opportunity loss.

What happened: Divya Bajaj alleged that Choice Equity executed numerous F&O trades in her account without her permission or a Power of Attorney on file.

She claimed her relationship manager sent fabricated reports showing profits, while her account was actually losing money in real time.

While the client lost over ₹5.4 lakh, the broker earned approximately ₹1.5 lakh in brokerage from those same unauthorised trades.

The broker’s defence: Choice argued she’d received SMS alerts and contract notes for years without ever complaining. But when it came to the one thing that actually mattered, proof she’d ordered the trades, they couldn’t produce the mandatory call recordings.

That evidentiary gap became the center of the dispute. The arbitrator ruled that without proof of pre-trade consent, the broker is liable for the resulting losses, regardless of whether alerts were sent afterward.

The outcome: the arbitrator directed the broker to pay ₹5,43,275.80 to the investor, after determining that Choice had failed to maintain proper records of her trading instructions.

Without those records, the trades were treated as unauthorised, which led to the investor’s claim being upheld.

Key takeaways from this case:

• Proof is mandatory, not optional. Brokers must record your consent before a trade. If they can’t prove you said yes, the trade is treated as unauthorised, full stop.
• The firm stays responsible either way. Even if a broker later fires a dishonest employee for faking statements, the company itself remains liable for the losses.
• Alerts aren’t permission. Receiving an SMS or contract note after a trade doesn’t mean you authorised it. The broker still needs proof of your original instruction.
• The COVID-19 excuse has real limits. Regulatory exemptions for call recording only applied for a specific window, April 2020 to July 2021, and don’t excuse a total absence of record-keeping outside that period.

Noticed your Choice Broking account trading far more than your own strategy calls for, and the brokerage bill to match?

Our team will review your contract notes and communication history, identify the exact evidence gap the broker needs to answer for, and help you build a complaint the way the Bajaj case was built.

Register with us for a free consultation.

What Should You Do If You Suspect Choice Broking Excess Charges?

If you suspect your account has been churned or notice trades you never authorised, the strength of your case comes down almost entirely to what you can document, not what you can argue.

• Gather proof first. Screenshot your brokerage charges, save your account statements, and keep every conversation with your broker or relationship manager, exactly the kind of documentation gap that decided the Bajaj case above.
• Pull your contract notes and compare them against your own instructions. Look specifically for trade frequency that doesn’t match your stated strategy, and brokerage totals that seem disproportionate to your account size.
• Raise it with the broker in writing first. Give them the specific trade dates and contract notes, not a general complaint about high fees.
• Escalate to compliance if support doesn’t resolve it. If the first line of response gives you the runaround, take it up a level within the firm before going external.

If your issue involves the broader question of how your account is being managed day-to-day, rather than a single disputed charge, our page on Choice Broking account handling covers that pattern in detail, including two separate SEBI orders and three additional arbitration cases.

How Do You Escalate a Choice Broking Excess Charges Complaint?

Once you’ve raised the issue internally and it hasn’t been resolved, here’s where it goes next:

• File a SEBI SCORES complaint if the broker’s compliance team doesn’t respond satisfactorily. This puts the regulator directly on the case and tracks the broker’s response against a defined timeline.
• An NSE complaint against broker is the next channel if SCORES doesn’t move things forward, putting the exchange itself in a position to review your complaint and require a response.
• For a more structured, conciliation-first route, SMART ODR registration moves your case into that process before it needs to escalate any further.
• For serious disputes involving real financial loss, stock market arbitration is the final step, exactly the mechanism that delivered Divya Bajaj’s ₹5.43 lakh award. Both sides present evidence, and an independent panel decides based on the exchange’s own rules.

For the complete process laid out end-to-end, our guide on complaint against stock broker SEBI walks through every stage in detail.

Conclusion

One of the most common ways capital gets depleted isn’t a single bad trade; it’s high-frequency trading tips that don’t align with your actual goals.

When a broker suggests constant buying and selling, it may not be for your profit; it may be for their commission.

Divya Bajaj’s case shows what happens when that pattern gets challenged properly, with documentation and a formal claim, rather than just frustration and a closed account.

Stay alert, audit your statements regularly, and remember: you should always be the final authority on your own account. Your broker works for you, never the other way around.

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Report. Recover. Stay Fraud Free.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. What was the outcome of the Divya Bajaj case against Choice Broking?

The arbitrator awarded her ₹5,43,275.80 after finding Choice Broking couldn't produce call recordings proving her F&O trades were authorised, despite earning roughly ₹1.5 lakh in brokerage from them.

2. What share of Choice Broking's complaints trace back to excess charges?

Within a specific reporting subset, roughly 109 of 264 complaints in 2024-25 and the same number of 265 in 2025-26 involved brokerage churning, though NSE doesn't track this as an official category.

3. Does a broker need my permission before every trade?

Yes. Brokers are required to maintain verifiable proof of your consent, typically a call recording or written instruction, before executing a trade. Receiving an alert afterward doesn't count as permission.

4. Can a broker avoid liability by blaming a rogue employee?

No. As the Bajaj case confirmed, the firm remains responsible for the losses even if it later dismisses the employee who faked the reports.

5. Is there a time limit on Choice Broking's COVID-era exemption for call recordings?

Yes. The exemption applied only from April 2020 to July 2021. It doesn't excuse a lack of records for trades placed outside that specific window.