Folio Numbers – Meaning and Benefits

If you are a mutual fund investor, you have surely used folio numbers. This is a unique client code that is allotted to you by a fund house (asset management company). Once you use this folio number to transact in the mutual fund schemes of a particular AMC, you can use that for repeated transactions. Here we present the Folio Number explanation in the form of frequently asked questions.

Can you explain what is a mutual fund folio number?

You can understand a mutual fund Folio number like an identification number that an asset management company gives to an investor. You only need one folio number across all the schemes of one AMC. For example, if you have a mutual fund number allotted to you by HDFC Mutual Fund, then you can use this folio across all your HDFC MF investments be it in debt or equity.

You need to remember that the folio number will be different for different AMCs. So if you have a folio number with HDFC Mutual Fund, it cannot be used for investing in SBI MF or ICICI Pru MF. An investor can purchase any number of schemes of one mutual fund AMC with the same folio number. The folio number helps people to track their investments easily. There is no restriction on how many folio numbers have. However, it is advisable not to have too many folio numbers for ease of management. Folio numbers of funds are typically either numeric or alphanumeric or they can be folios separated by the Slash sign.

How many folio numbers do i need to have at any point of time?

That would entirely depend on how many different mutual fund houses you want to invest in. If you already have the folio number allotted of Mirae Mutual Fund, then you can use the same folio number to buy any number of schemes of Mirae. However, each time you buy funds of a new AMC, you will need a unique folio number.

As a prudent measure it is better to limit the number of folio numbers to about 3-4. If you have 20 folios and small investments in 20 different funds, you are going to have a problem managing all these investments effectively.

What happens if i forget my folio number?

Nothing much to worry. You can always refer to you online mutual fund statement or you can refer to your consolidated mutual fund statement and that will have your folio number on top. Alternatively, if you are already an investor in an AMC, say in ICICI Prudential, then you can ask the registrar to search the folio number for you based on your PAN number or your mobile number. However, it is always better you maintain a central record of all your folio numbers easily accessible in one place.

Can you outline some of the benefits of having folio number?

Here are some of the major benefits of folio numbers that I can think of.

• The folio allows you to easily tracks Investments in one place since the folio number is your central key word to bring together all the mutual fund investment in one particular AMC. As a result, you can easily find the value of your holding in the fund. They can also track the losses and gains that the fund has made. For the AMCs it helps them track your transactions with that particular AMC.

• Your holdings in a mutual fund is not just about value but also about how many units or fractional units you are holding. A folio number helps an investor know about the units they have in a fund. An investor can very easily find out the units they own with different asset management companies. This enables easy tracking of the performance of the units. Decisions to retain or exit units can be taken accordingly.

• For the AMCs and distributors, the folio number enables them to easily locate and review the investor details. It furnishes the AMC with an investor’s record. Asset management companies can find the purchase or sales of units made by the person. Also, it offers them the contact details of an investor at one single point.

Can my folio number help me track portfolio online?

Yes that is perfectly possible, but you can just access your mutual fund holdings with the folio number. There is a process to get a secret PIN code from the fund house and only with the combination of folio number and PIN number you can access you statement of account online. In fact, once you enable online transactions, you can even transact all your purchases and sales on the net itself. Just ensure to remember the PIN and in case you forget, there is a detailed process to regenerate the PIN number again.

Where do I get my folio number?

Broadly, there are 3 ways of getting your folio details as under.

1. The first way is to get the folio number through the fund account statement given to you by the AMC. This is normally given each month in case of Systematic Investment Plan (SIPs) and periodically in other cases. The mutual fund statement can be obtained from the fund house itself and they provide full details of your folio numbers.

2. The second way is through the Consolidated Account Statements. Now, Consolidated account statements are statements that reflect a person’s overall investments across various folio numbers of different AMCs. This is issued by registrars like CAMS Online and KFintech. The registrar maps your consolidated holdings through the PAN number and they will contain all your folio numbers with different AMCs.

3. The third way to get a folio number is by approaching the registrar and procure the folio number after identifying yourself as the bonafide holder of the folio. Nowadays, fund houses also allow you to call the registrar call centre and access folio number details.

Is it possible to consolidate folios across funds?

I will respond to your query in two parts. Firstly we will see what happens if you want to have a common folio number across funds. The second is how to consolidate your folios within a fund. Let us look at both these separately.

Firstly, the concept of a folio number is that it is unique to an AMC. So, if you have a folio number, it can only be used to transact with that particular AMC. However, there are 2 ways to overcome this problem. You can go through aggregators like Funds India or Groww who help you to invest in different funds using a common aggregator platform using your unique code. Here you don’t worry about folios. The second way is to buy and sell funds through the stock exchange using your demat account. However, in this case you can only transact in funds that are available on the exchange platform.

Secondly, let us talk about consolidation of folios within the same AMC. It is possible that you may have invested in the same fund at different times with different folio numbers. For simplicity, you can give a letter to your AMC to consolidate your folio numbers into one master folio number. This is a simple process and you can complete this process in about 1 weeks and it makes life a lot simpler for you.