can I transfer shares from one demat account to another without selling

Yes. Moving holdings between two demat accounts held in your own name and under the same PAN is not a sale — you remain the beneficial owner throughout, no exchange is involved and no money changes hands. Because there is no transfer in the tax sense, no capital gain arises, no securities transaction tax is charged, and the original cost and date of acquisition are unchanged.

a transfer of securities between demat accounts that does not go through an exchange is called

An off-market transfer. Where you are leaving the old broker entirely, the same movement is usually done as a closure-cum-transfer, which shuts the old account and pushes everything across in one instruction — and is normally carried out without the per-holding charge an ordinary off-market transfer attracts.

why does my new broker show the wrong buy price after a demat transfer

Because the depository moves the shares but not their history — what you paid and when you bought are held in your contract notes and the old broker’s reports, not in the pipe the shares travel down. The new platform will therefore show transferred holdings at zero cost, at the price on the day they arrived, or as unavailable, and may present a holding you have had for years as short-term. The legal position is unaffected; establishing the real cost and date is your job, which is why the old statements have to be downloaded before the account is closed.

does nomination carry over when I change demat account

No. Nomination is an attribute of the account rather than of the shares, so the new demat account needs its own nomination recorded separately. Nothing in a transfer instruction carries it across, and it is the most commonly skipped step in the whole exercise. The same is true of standing instructions and bank mandates — they stop with the old account and have to be created afresh.

what is a basic services demat account

A Basic Services Demat Account, or BSDA, is a small-holdings category of demat account that carries nil or reduced annual maintenance charges. It is available only to someone who holds a single demat account as sole or first holder, so it is not a way to keep a second account open cheaply. Its holding-value thresholds have been revised more than once, so ask your depository participant for the current ones.

Changing broker: what moves with the shares, and what does not

An email says the annual maintenance charge is going up, or the platform keeps failing on the mornings it matters, or a better app appears and everyone in the office has moved to it. Opening the new account takes an afternoon. The question that stops most people is what happens to eleven years of holdings sitting in the old one — whether moving them counts as selling, whether the tax bill lands now, whether the gains reset. The answers are reassuring, and they are also not the point. Moving shares between two demat accounts in your own name is not a sale, triggers no tax, and usually costs nothing. What breaks is quieter than that, and it does not announce itself until the day you sell.

Think of it like this

The gold, and the bill for the gold

You shift the family gold from one bank locker to another. The gold is unchanged, it is still yours, and nobody taxed you for carrying it across town. But the purchase bills were in a folder at home, and in the shifting one of them was lost. You still own the bangles. The day you sell them, you simply cannot show what they cost, and the burden of showing it is yours.

In the market

A demat account holds securities. It does not hold what you paid for them or the day you bought them — those live in your contract notes and in the old broker's reports. Transfer the holdings and the new broker receives shares with no history attached, because there is no history in the pipe to send.

Why the move itself is harmless

Shares are held in a depository, and your broker is only the depository participant through which you reach it. Changing broker therefore means moving securities from one participant's account to another participant's account — both of them still in your name, under your PAN, with you as the beneficial owner throughout. Nothing is sold, nobody pays you anything, no exchange is involved. For tax purposes there is no transfer at all, so there is no capital gain, no securities transaction tax, and — this is the part that matters later — no change to the original cost or the original date of acquisition. Shares bought in 2019 and moved to a new broker in 2026 are still shares bought in 2019.

The two ways the holdings can travel

Closure-cum-transfer

The old account is closed and everything in it is pushed across in one instruction
Normally carried out without a per-holding transfer charge, because the account is being shut
Cleanest where you are leaving the old broker entirely, which is usually the case
It closes the demat account — but confirm separately that the trading account is closed too, and that no residual charge is left running

An ordinary off-market transfer

You instruct the old participant to move named holdings, on paper or through the depository's own online facility
Usually charged per holding, so a fragmented portfolio of thirty small positions is not a trivial bill
Right where you are keeping both accounts open, or moving only part of the portfolio
The reason recorded on the instruction matters: a transfer between accounts of the same holder is a different thing from a gift or an off-market sale, and choosing the wrong one invites a question you will have to answer

Careful

The failure this lesson exists for: your new broker's profit-and-loss statement cannot compute the gain on transferred holdings, because it never saw the purchase. Depending on the platform it will show them at zero cost, or at the price on the day they arrived, or flag them as unavailable — and if it uses the arrival date, a holding you have had since 2019 will be presented as a short-term one. Those reports are a convenience the broker offers, not a record the law recognises. The cost and the date are facts about your actual purchase, and establishing them is your job. So before the old account is closed, download and keep the holding statement, the profit-and-loss and tax reports for every year, and the contract notes. After closure, retrieving them is a request to a firm that no longer has you as a customer.

The things that do not travel with the shares

What people assume moves	What actually happens
Cash lying with the broker	It does not move. Withdraw the funds ledger balance to your bank before closing, and check for a small residue after the last settlement clears
Pledged holdings	Shares pledged for margin cannot be transferred while the pledge stands. Unpledge first, which may mean closing a position or bringing in cash
Unsettled trades and pending entitlements	Anything not yet settled, and any bonus, split or dividend with a record date around the move, needs the transfer timed around it rather than through it
Mutual fund units held in statement form	They were never in the demat account. Those sit in a folio with the fund house and its registrar, and changing broker does not touch them
Systematic plans and mandates	A standing instruction lives with the old broker and its bank mandate. It stops when the account stops, and has to be created afresh, not migrated
Nomination	It is an attribute of the account, not of the shares. The new account needs its own nomination recorded, and this is the single most commonly skipped step in the whole exercise
Cost and date of acquisition	Not carried in the depository at all. They are unchanged in law and invisible to the new broker, which is why the old statements are the valuable thing you take with you

The order that avoids all of it

1
Open the new account and let it settle
Complete the new account fully — bank linkage, nomination, the settlement authorisation you are comfortable giving — before touching the old one. Nothing about the old account is urgent, and an unfinished new account with holdings sitting in it is worse than no new account.
2
Download everything from the old broker
Holding statement, ledger, contract notes, and the tax and profit-and-loss report for every financial year you held the account. Save them somewhere that is not the broker's app. This is the step the entire lesson is about.
3
Clear the decks
Unpledge anything pledged, close open positions, let pending settlements complete, and withdraw the cash balance. Then check whether any corporate action has a record date in the next fortnight.
4
Instruct the transfer
Closure-cum-transfer if you are leaving, an off-market instruction with the correct same-holder reason if you are not. Both accounts must be in the same name and the same PAN — a transfer to an account held jointly, or in a spouse's name, is a different transaction with different consequences.
5
Verify against an independent record
The depositories send a consolidated account statement covering your holdings across participants. Use it to confirm that everything arrived and that the old account is genuinely empty, rather than trusting either broker's own screen.
6
Close the old account in writing, and get it confirmed
An account left open keeps accruing its annual charge, and an unpaid charge on a dormant account turns into a debit balance and a call from a recovery desk two years later. Note what this rules out: a Basic Services Demat Account — the small-holdings category carrying nil or reduced annual charges — is available only to somebody who holds a single demat account as sole or first holder, so it is not a way to make a second, kept-open account cheap. It is worth asking about for the one account you end up with, and its value thresholds have been revised more than once, so ask for the current ones.

Key idea

Where gains have to be worked out on shares of the same company bought on different dates, they are matched on a first-in, first-out basis — the oldest lot is treated as sold first. Moving the whole holding to one new account does not disturb that ordering, because the dates are facts about your purchases rather than about the pipe they travelled down; what does not survive is the new broker's ability to see them. One qualification matters if you keep both accounts open: for shares held in dematerialised form the matching is applied account by account, not across everything you own — so the same company split across two accounts is two separate queues, and which lot is treated as sold depends on which account you sell from. That is a reason to consolidate rather than to leave a second account running out of inertia. And it is the same reason the old statements matter, stated once more: a change of intermediary changes nothing about what you own or when you bought it, and everything about who is able to prove it.

Check yourself

You move 400 shares bought in 2019 to a new broker in 2026 and sell them a month later. The new broker's report shows the gain as short-term, computed from the transfer date. What is the position?

Simple bhasha mein

Sona locker badal gaya, bill ghar pe reh gaya

Naye broker ke paas share bhejna bikri nahi hai — wahi PAN, wahi maalik, na tax na STT, aur khareedne ki tareekh aur daam bhi wahi purana rehta hai. Dikkat doosri hai: demat mein sirf share rakhe jaate hain, unki laagat aur tareekh nahi. 2019 ke khareede share 2026 mein transfer karke bech do, toh naye broker ki report unhe transfer wali tareekh se short-term dikha degi — kyunki usne aapki khareed dekhi hi nahi. Report suvidha hai, kanoon nahi. Isliye account band karne se PEHLE purana holding statement, har saal ki P&L aur tax report, aur contract note download karke rakh lo. Aur transfer se pehle: pledge khol lo, paisa nikaal lo, aur naye account mein nomination zaroor bharo.

What to remember

Moving holdings between demat accounts in your own name is not a sale — no tax, and the original cost and date are unchanged.
Closure-cum-transfer is normally free; an ordinary off-market transfer is charged per holding.
The new broker cannot see what you paid or when, so its profit-and-loss report will be wrong on transferred holdings.
Download every statement and contract note before the old account is closed, not after.
Cash, pledges, mandates and nomination do not travel; close the old account in writing and confirm it.

You reached the endMark it done and keep your streak going.

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Common questions

Short, direct answers to what people ask about this topic.

can I transfer shares from one demat account to another without selling: Yes. Moving holdings between two demat accounts held in your own name and under the same PAN is not a sale — you remain the beneficial owner throughout, no exchange is involved and no money changes hands. Because there is no transfer in the tax sense, no capital gain arises, no securities transaction tax is charged, and the original cost and date of acquisition are unchanged.
a transfer of securities between demat accounts that does not go through an exchange is called: An off-market transfer. Where you are leaving the old broker entirely, the same movement is usually done as a closure-cum-transfer, which shuts the old account and pushes everything across in one instruction — and is normally carried out without the per-holding charge an ordinary off-market transfer attracts.
why does my new broker show the wrong buy price after a demat transfer: Because the depository moves the shares but not their history — what you paid and when you bought are held in your contract notes and the old broker’s reports, not in the pipe the shares travel down. The new platform will therefore show transferred holdings at zero cost, at the price on the day they arrived, or as unavailable, and may present a holding you have had for years as short-term. The legal position is unaffected; establishing the real cost and date is your job, which is why the old statements have to be downloaded before the account is closed.
does nomination carry over when I change demat account: No. Nomination is an attribute of the account rather than of the shares, so the new demat account needs its own nomination recorded separately. Nothing in a transfer instruction carries it across, and it is the most commonly skipped step in the whole exercise. The same is true of standing instructions and bank mandates — they stop with the old account and have to be created afresh.
what is a basic services demat account: A Basic Services Demat Account, or BSDA, is a small-holdings category of demat account that carries nil or reduced annual maintenance charges. It is available only to someone who holds a single demat account as sole or first holder, so it is not a way to keep a second account open cheaply. Its holding-value thresholds have been revised more than once, so ask your depository participant for the current ones.