Unfortunately, many fund investors are still stuck in that era, and primarily through no fault of their own. If you go to the registrar CAMS and Karvy’s service centers in any city, you will still see people in line with paper forms and cheques. This is still happening partly because a simple, unified way of directly dealing with all fund companies through a common portal did not yet exist.
Even two decades ago, at the dawn of the consumer internet, it was clear that full computerization and direct network access to mutual fund investors was the only way forward. And yet, if you told me that day that such a facility would be available to call an autorickshaw and order food from your neighborhood restaurant, before it would be mutual fundsI don’t believe you.
Still, a little better late than never, especially if the solution that has finally emerged is as promising as the newly launched one.mfcentral‘. Since you are reading this column, you are actually a fund investor. So you should take a break now and spend a few minutes (that’s all it will take) to register at https://www.mfcentral.com/. Check out different parts of the site and see what you can do. You will be able to view your mutual fund holdings by AMC and broad fund types. you can also initiate non-financial transactions. Fund investment data is not analytical like Value Research, but provides a seamless integrated view across all AMCs which was not available earlier.
Available non-financial transactions are changes in address, phone number and email, bank mandate etc. However, this is only the launch version of the service. In the next few months, real transactions will be available, as well as an app for easy mobile access. Some facilities for intermediaries will also be added. With all the work done, a unified portal will be available to the mutual fund investor for almost all the interactions.
However, the most important thing about MFCentral is not what I told you yet. It does not directly refer to the features of the Service or the convenience it provides. Rather, the real importance lies in what the second-order effects of such a service might say, how it will change the quality of your investments as well as your propensity to invest. Until now, a major part of the mental and physical effort of investing was spent in the mechanics of investing. If these are physical, it’s definitely a nightmare, but even digital means dealing with multiple AMC websites, each with its own different interface and problems. For many investors, the solution is to go through an intermediary (digital or physical), who, in addition to handling the mechanics, also impacts your investment choices. People are so mentally overloaded with the procedural part of fund investing that the part that really matters — the investment decisions — receives less attention than they deserve.
In fact, much of the infrastructure of a digitally enabled mutual fund investment system is already in the form of widespread internet access and digital banking. The last piece of the puzzle is integration with the mutual fund transaction system, and that is what is finally happening.
(The writer is CEO, Value Research)