KARACHI, June 10: Number of shares in Investor Account Services of Central Depository Company of Pakistan Limited (CDC), where investors can have direct control of their accounts, had increased to over one billion shares, CDC said in a press release issued on Monday.

CDC observed that it represented market capitalization of over Rs20 billion. CDC had extended its service to retail level by introducing Investor Account Services initially in Karachi in 1999, and with more than 6,000 accounts, the service was recently extended to Lahore and Islamabad.

In an effort to add more services, CDC had introduced Interactive Voice Response System (IVR). “This system allows users to access information by interacting with an information database via digital telephone, thereby facilitating investor account holders to check their account positions anywhere, anytime,” CDC said.