Consolidated Mutual Funds Statement: Benefits & How to Generate

Most investors never invest in one mutual fund all their life. They may invest either directly or through a broker but the fund house will allocate a specific Folio Number to each client. This folio number can be used for future investments redemption, statement procurement etc. However, the folio number based query is ok, if you only have investment in funds of one AMC. Then it is quite simple. What if your investments are spread across AMCs?

For example, if you have investments in funds across 9 different AMCs, then you will have 9 different folio numbers. Now for each folio number you can download the statement from the respective AMC. At the end of the exercise, you will have a total of 9 statements with you but you still don’t have a consolidated overall picture. That is where a consolidated statement comes in handy.

Mutual funds empower you to invest in various schemes and portfolios. But now comes the tougher part of maintaining records and getting a consolidated picture. The answer is to get a consolidated statement. This consolidated statement covers all your transactions, your corporate actions and your holdings of all the funds in one place. But how is this done.

This is a special facilities provided by the mutual fund registrars. Currently, in India there are 2 major registrars and 2 in-house registrars. The 4 registrars to mutual funds are KFintech (formerly Karvy Computershare), CAMS Online, Franklin Templeton and Sundaram BNP Paribas. These registrars have come together and syndicated a service that enables mutual fund investors to get a consolidated view of their MF holdings through e-CAS. This is a simple mail-back service and is quite popular among the stakeholder community.

For the consolidated account statement (CAS), it is mandatory that your email id is registered with the fund registrar. Your PAN will automatically be registered and that along with your email id will be used to track all your investments across the 4 registrars plus the mutual funds bought through the stock exchanges via NSDL or CDSL demat accounts.

Investors who have registered their email address with mutual funds serviced by KFintech, CAMS Online, Franking Templeton and Sundaram BNP can avail the facility and easily obtain a consolidated PDF Account Statement in their registered email address.

How can investors be kept updated about their mutual fund holdings on a consistent basis. Obviously, asking them to get data from 10 different points is not feasible. The best way is to provide them with a Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) to investors regularly. But what exactly is this CAS? The CAS gives an investor all the details of mutual fund holdings and transactions an organized and systematic manner at one single place.

It shows the mutual fund investments under a single PAN, as was registered and KYC done. The soft copy of the CAS can be downloaded from CAMS or KFintech itself but hard copy has to be requested specifically. It is important for investors as it carries all information regarding sale, purchase and other transactions in a mutual fund as well as the current holdings by scheme and plan for each holding. This gives an overall insight into the quantum, value and quality of holdings in mutual funds.

Can you outline some of the advantage of downloading CAS?

Here are some of the major advantages of downloading CAS. You should do this regularly, at least once in a month for better control over your holdings and understanding. Here are some of the advantages of downloading the CAS.

1. You get a bird’s eye view of your entire portfolio of mutual fund holdings. The CAS helps the investor to understand your exposure to various funds. You can accordingly decide to choose a fund house or company, based on the info and either increase the exposure to any fund or category and where to reduce.

2. CAS is convenient and also substantially reduces your paperwork. The consolidated report contains all the required data about transactions and holdings all in one place. This also gives a quick view about the investment mix of the investor in a jiffy.

3. It keeps the investors informed about what is to be done and what is not to be done. It is a one point access to all your mutual fund investments irrespective of which mode your purchased it.

To generate the CAS online, these are the steps that you need to follow.

• You can access the CAS from the website of one of the registrars i.e. KFintech, CAMS, Sundaram or Franklin Templeton. All the registrars allow for generation of CAS from their websites and most AMCs also provide the link.

• You can click on the registrar from who you need to download the CAS or you can just select all. This will automatically get you a consolidated view.

• The next step is to enter your email ID and Permanent Account Number (PAN) in exactly the precise way as any errors can result in your CAS not getting generated. You must do this cautiously.

• Then you must enter a password. This can be any password as per the stipulated requirements but ensure that you remember this password. This need not be the password that you have given to the mutual fund account.

• The CAS service is a mail back service so it will be sent to you by email. The PDF file will be password protected and you must use the password that you had inputted at the time of registration to open the file.

Note that CAS statement does not include your confidential details such as your PAN card, bank details and contact number.

Here are some of the key contents of the CAS report generated by you.

• It contains the details about AMC and mutual fund that you are invested in. Along with the details of fund wise holdings, you get details of all your transactions. These include your purchase transactions, redemptions, any corporate actions like bonus, dividends etc. The total holdings fund wise and scheme wise is also included in this CAS report.

• It classifies whether the said transactions are lump sum investments or whether they are SIP (Systematic Investment Plan) investments. Here you get a classified details of closing and opening unit portfolio balance.

• In case the investor has opted for a Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP) or Systematic Transfer Plan (STP), that details are also mentioned in the CAS statement itself.

• The CAS also comprises details of the investor, any nominee registration and contact information, bank mandate details etc. CAS also makes it a lot easier to check the KYC status and nominee registration status.