In a busy city life, many a times you are running short of time to manage multiple responsibilities, may it be at work or at home. And to add to it, many a times you have to run across various shops & stores to cater to your daily household needs too. But thanks to the recent setups like hypermarkets, supermarkets, malls etc. which act as ‘one stop shop’ relieving you of running from one store to the other to buy different household things. These ‘one stop shops’ provide grocery to readymade garments all under one roof, helping you to save your precious time and energy.

Similarly, while investing in mutual funds through the online portal, you must have come across this hurdle of investing in your preferred mutual fund scheme. But for some reason or the other you either have to take help of a distributor who maintains an online mutual fund transaction portal or use his or her AMFI Registration Number (ARN) using online portal or manage multiple login id’s to keep a track on your mutual fund investments across different fund houses.

But if the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) is successful in setting up of its ‘MF Utility’ – an online transaction platform for mutual fund investors; it will act as a ‘one stop shop’ for you to transact in mutual funds across different fund houses with the help of just a single user id. Moreover, you need not submit your KYC details again and again for making fresh investments as the Centralised KYC (made at the time of online platform registration) on the MF Utility platform will take care of this.

AMFI had stated its intentions of building this platform last year, when Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange (NSE) had built their own platforms. In order to compete with them and offer investors a stand-alone platform, AMFI had come up with this idea. But the plans to launch the online platform got delayed as the vendor contracts were not awarded. Hence, the launch of ‘MF Utility’ may happen only in the second half of the calendar year 2012.

 

Our view:

We believe that the step taken by AMFI is in the right direction to empower the investor to transact on his own. This will, to some extent eliminate the need of an intermediary. The use of a single login id for the investor to track their entire portfolio of mutual funds across different fund houses will provide the much needed ease to invest in mutual funds and ultimately increase the reach of the mutual fund industry who is reeling under the pressure of declining folios.

But the platform to be launched by AMFI may not be successful if proper awareness is not created by AMFI.. It requires more and more of investor education or awareness programs to be conducted so that the investor is well informed before taking a decision to invest in a particular mutual fund scheme. Also selecting the right type of mutual funds for one’s portfolio requires thorough research and experience of an unbiased advisor. Going forward, the AMFI should cater to this need of the mutual fund investors as well.

 

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bestellen@die-milchmanns.de Jul 25, 2012 We have our IRAs with Edward Jones and we see that the price of silver is predictor to increase. That said, is it possible to put real' silver in our IRA, so that we watch it grow with our other funds (hopefully)? Thanks so much!

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