What a mutual fund distributor actually does

Everything between deciding to invest and actually being able to. AMFI publishes standardised forms and processes for KYC and investor-service requests, and we walk you through each of them rather than handing you a folder.

• Mutual fund account opening
• KYC / CKYC assistance and FATCA/CRS documentation
• PAN and bank details
• Nomination, and email or mobile registration and updates
• Demat and non-demat process guidance
• Folio creation and consolidation

SEBI and AMFI require a distributor to act in the investor’s interest, exercise due diligence and make sure what is recommended actually suits them. That is not possible without knowing where you stand first.

• Age, risk tolerance and investment horizon
• Investment amount and liquidity requirements
• Existing investments against your objectives
• SIP and SWP requirements
• Short, medium and long-term needs

Equity, debt and hybrid funds, solution-oriented funds and ELSS, index funds and ETFs, fund of funds and other permitted products. For each one we go through the investment objective, asset allocation and risk, the scheme’s characteristics and portfolio, expense ratio, exit load and benchmark, historical performance, and the fund manager’s strategy. No scheme is ever recommended because it earns more commission, AMFI’s code puts your interest first, and so do we.

• Equity, debt and hybrid funds
• Solution-oriented funds and ELSS
• Index funds and ETFs
• Fund of funds and other permitted products
• Objective, asset allocation, risk and portfolio explained
• Expense ratio, exit load and benchmark explained

A SIP is not something you set once and forget. Incomes change, goals move and instalments need adjusting. We handle the paperwork and keep the plan tracking towards what it was set up for, including a SIP health report showing your current value against the target corpus, any shortfall, and what would close it.

• SIP registration and bank mandate assistance
• Increase, decrease, pause, restart and cancellation
• Date change, step-up and top-up
• SIP return analysis and goal tracking
• SIP portfolio review

New investments, additional purchases and NFOs, with allocation decided across schemes rather than put into whatever is topical that month.

• New investments and additional purchases
• NFO investments
• Investment allocation across schemes
• STP and SWP setup
• Switch and redemption transactions
• Portfolio rebalancing where appropriate

SEBI describes the distributor’s role as including helping investors execute transactions with the AMCs. This is that part of the job.

• Purchase, additional purchase and switch
• SIP, STP and SWP
• Bank mandate setup
• Nomination and folio service requests

The difference between selling a mutual fund and servicing a portfolio. Your holdings are reviewed continuously rather than at the point of sale, and you hear from us when something needs attention, not only when there is something to buy.

• Current valuation with absolute and XIRR returns
• Scheme-wise performance and asset allocation
• AMC-wise and category-wise allocation
• Portfolio concentration and top holdings
• Underperforming schemes identified
• Scheme against benchmark comparison
• Portfolio risk analysis

Children’s education and marriage, retirement, a house, a holiday, an emergency corpus, financial independence. For any of them we can show the projected outcome under different assumptions, and what changes if you adjust the instalment or the horizon.

• Children’s education and marriage
• Retirement and wealth creation
• House purchase
• Emergency corpus
• Financial independence
• Projections under different assumptions

Working back from the income you want to the instalment that funds it, adjusted for inflation, allowing for what you already hold, and carried through to how the corpus is drawn down afterwards.

• Retirement corpus illustrations
• SIP calculations and accumulation projections
• Inflation-adjusted requirements
• Existing corpus analysis
• Corpus depletion illustrations
• SWP and retirement income projections

We can explain how mutual fund gains are taxed and produce the statements you need. We are not tax professionals, though, and for anything that turns on your own circumstances we will tell you to speak to one.

• Realised and unrealised capital gains
• Short-term and long-term classification
• Capital gains statements and reports
• Tax-saving investments such as ELSS
• Tax implications of redemptions and switches

AMFI’s guidelines call for prompt, competent investor service and grievance handling. In practice that means the small things get done without you chasing them.

• Account statements, CAS assistance and folio consolidation
• Folio information and transaction confirmation
• Bank account, address, email and mobile changes
• Nomination, KYC and FATCA updates
• Transmission and death claim assistance
• Change of distributor processes
• Grievance assistance