At the risk of sounding immodest, our article Open letter to SEBI Factsheets elicited a lot of visitor feedback; most of the feedback agreed with our stand on the issue of transparent and consistent disclosure of all relevant information related to a mutual fund scheme. More than the quality of the article, we like to think this feedback was a perfect reflection of the state of information disclosure (or the lack of it) and the investor's grievance with the same.
 

While every query/feedback/doubt/recommendation posted on personalfn.com is actively responded to in a time-bound manner, we felt that given the nature of the article and the feedback thereof, it was pertinent to share the same with all our visitors as also SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India).

Below, we list some of the feedback that we have received:

H Jaggi
The letter has raised very important points, which are of relevance to every long term investor. Please do follow up with SEBI to get them implemented.I appreciate your interest in improving the disclosure norms for investor interest. I would appreciate if you can write a similar letter to IRDA for the very loose disclosure norms for NAV, Portfolio, A/c statements to clients not given for charges & switch requests given , method of fund investment followed, cap of funds selected etc which can help a large number of ULIP investors improving their returns & selecting right companies to invest.

Anand Bhagwat
I compliment you on this selfless initiative of yours. I admire your courage of conviction. May God bless you all. I cannot help feeling that there ought to be a way to address such suggestions to the Trustees of MFs - in addition to SEBI. After all, aren't the Trustees meant to 'bat for the investors'? So, the following is for your consideration. Perhaps you may consider taking the initiative to ask SEBI to create a direct channel of communication between the Trustees and the investors.

N R Sampat
When a Fund Manager makes an investment he is acting as an agent / employee of the investor and as such the investor has every right to know about how his money is being invested and a right to take an appropriate action if required. For this what you have listed is very much essential.

Nilakantan
Your letter to SEBI was indeed excellent. Especially the two points on the investment objectives and whether the fund manager has invested in the scheme. The current investment objectives as stated by the funds leave one completely clueless as to the type of scheme, the only exceptions, perhaps, being the dividend yield funds. Do keep it up.

Paul Kattookaren
Congrats for the recommendations. Fully support your views. These reflect all investor worries.

Sanjeev Shukla
I very much appreciate your open letter to sebi.

Basant Maheshwari
Good piece of research and advice to SEBI. A good article indeed.

Ernest Rodrigues
Another feather in your constant endeavour to protect the investors. Keep up the good work.

T.C.LAHKAR
This is a very appropriate and timely placed wish to SEBI by you on behalf of all kinds of investors in MF.

Abhijit Sarkar
The expense ratio,turn over ratio should be published every month. The regulators should make it mandatory for schemes to disclose their company portfolios and to follow a standarised clasification of companies into sectors.

K S Periyasamy
It is a good movement, your letter conveys the message of a common investor's feeling. Keep doing such good initiatives.

Hemant
This is very much required and more to be done on continues basis.

Having championed the cause of investor empowerment consistently over the years, we are aware of the issues that need to be resolved and realise that there is a lot more to be achieved. The investor feedback is a pointer to how much more needs to be accomplished before the Indian investor can claim to have got a fair deal.

To address the investor feedback, we plan to undertake the following steps:

1. Forward all the feedback we have received on the article to SEBI. In fact, a common thread running across most of the feedback is  Personalfn has done a good job, now for the difficult part implementation. To that end, we believe that it's an ideal situation for SEBI to step in and improve disclosure norms. To be fair to SEBI, their letter to Personalfn underlines their intention to take this forward in consultation with AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India).

2. As at least one visitor has requested Personalfn, we have every intention to pursue the cause of transparent, detailed, consistent and regular disclosure norms across other personal finance products and services like life insurance for instance. We intend to write to the IRDA (Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority) requesting them to address the gross deficiencies in ULIP disclosure norms. Not that the problem has escaped our attention, we have addressed this issue in the past through several articles, one of which can be read at the following link:

3. Given the increasing instances of gross negligence of investor rights, our communication with SEBI (in the form of open letters or otherwise) will be even more frequent. We are hopeful that SEBI will take up the issues (on merit) in a time-bound. One such issue that Personalfn tackled in the recent past and which drew very positive investor feedback can be read by clicking on the link below:

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Comments

rakesh_b_parikh@yahoo.com Jan 21, 2020 Systems at Personal Fn are very poor and deficient. As a subscriber thye have promised the issue to be delivered 20th of every month but invariably and very often it gets skipped !! and as subscriber one has to keep tab and remind them only after which they send , though with apologies and mentioning that the same will never happen again but after two three months once again they skip and subscriber has to remind them. No comments on performance of their recommendation which inspite of repeated reminders they have not forwarded !!

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