Friday 18 November 2016

Portfolio Valuation – Statement of Accounts ( SoA)

Keeping physical share certificates, mutual fund statements, fixed deposit receipts etc in safe custody and sending or receiving them through registered posts is history now!

Welcome to the new world of online management of personal finance, where you get your valuation in finger tips; literally in finger tips through your smart phone!! 

Managing mutual fund statements online
Unit holder/investor can get his Statement of Accounts (SoA) from his mutual fund house (AMC) or from Register and Transfer Agents (RTA).  Usually we get our SoA whenever a new transaction has happened in our folio. There are two ways to get the same: 

1. Through email –> recommended now (let us go green)
2. Physical hard copies –> Not Recommended (only if you wish to store for record purposes)

Most of the time, when you need to know the value of your holdings, or to know your scheme names, your SoA may not be available within your reach. For this, if you have a phone next to you, you will be able to get those unit details, value, etc quickly. Let me explain how to get the same.

Access SoA in mobile
You can get the consolidated units and market value in your phone by SMS. All you need to do is send SMS to AMC in the specified format. Again, the specified format and number for contact may not be readily available, which is the usual case for most of us, but you shouldn't loose heart. There are other ways.

Access SoA through email
Google the AMC name and visit their site. Most of the fund houses will deliver the SoA through email, to your registered email in their site, by entering your registered email id/PAN number/Folio number. You will usually get the statements within 24 hrs in your email inbox. Most of the time, it is instant. Next big hurdle is opening the attachment. These statements are usually Password protected and read only PDF files. The mail will have the details of password combination and how to open the attachments. Please go through the instructions, follow the same, and you will be able to open the file and get the SoA details as requested. These password combinations vary from fund house to fund house.  If you are a small investor and hold only one or two schemes in limited fund houses, this will be easy. The investor holding multiple schemes across various fund houses, getting these SoA's by visiting their sites and getting the details is cumbersome. Secondly, the format and contents may not be uniform. As indicated earlier, these files are read only files. It is not possible to copy, paste, and perform calculations to arrive at a summary of the market value of all your holdings across the mutual funds houses.

Getting your consolidated statement/Summary Report
In the case of SIP/STP transactions, SoA will not be triggered for each transaction. During the month end, you will get consolidated statements from NSDL, usually called as CAS.

NSDL is sending Summary reports every month around the 9th/10th with transactions done in that period, in a PDF file. This will have details of stock holdings/NCD/mutual funds in dmat mode, other mutual fund holdings in physical mode and insurance details if available in e-insurance form.
This report is consolidated using feeds from various agencies using your unique PAN number.
Please check your mail box and go through this report. These are very useful reports to get an understanding of your holdings in financial institutions. 

Role of RTA’s to access the summary reports:
For those investors having multiple schemes across the spectrum of AMC’s, RTA plays a major role in getting the summary of those reports. Now these SoA's are available as mail back reports from RTA’s. To get the portfolio valuation, you have to visit these RTA sites and get the consolidated statements from them through email in the same way as discussed earlier.

Currently in Nov 2016, there are four RTA's operating for all mutual fund house in India. They are CAMS, Karvy, FT, and Sundaram. The first two RTA's handle most of the fund houses. Last two are AMC's, and they have their own RTA.

For example, you have one ICICI Pru scheme and another IDFC scheme. By visiting their RTA (CAMS), you will get the consolidated portfolio statement from their mail back report. If instead of IDFC, you hold an UTI scheme, getting both SoA in single place is not possible. You have to visit Karvy site to get the UTI SoA. However, both RTA's provide one consolidated simple Summary report including all AMC holdings, in their site. This will be of great help to investors.
NSDL reports are push based technology and triggered every month at a predetermined date. You cannot get these reports on demand. Whereas Mail back reports can be generated whenever we need them.

How to get the reports through mail back option?
In the RTA site, you can get the following reports on demand through mail back reports:
Consolidated portfolio summary – There are two types of consolidated summary reports. Both consolidates the folio details based on unique email id. Hence, to get all your families holding details in one place, you need to give same email id in all fund house documentation.
1. Consolidated across all RTA – This will give scheme name, units, market value and summary of total portfolio value, with or without zero holdings (without zero holdings will show current portfolio, with zero holdings will show schemes you hold in past and currently with no available units)
2. Consolidated within RTA – Apart from the summary of schemes, units, market value, this report will give plenty of other useful charts etc. This report will give XIRR returns, a very useful feature to understand your returns from the investment. Please read it correctly, it is your return and not point to point or fund returns published in booklets – your return means, from the time you purchased a fund, till date what return you are getting out of this investment. This report will give pie chart showing your investments in various fund houses within this RTA serviced funds. Nowadays, with ageing of your scheme holdings also being provided, this will help to understand capital gain impacts in your investments. 

Also you can get Transaction reports in simple excel file format for further analysis from your end.
You can generate capital gain/performance report.

Looking to access RTA sites? Look no further, here are their official links:
CAMS site can be accessed using the following link/by clicking here
Karvy site can be accessed using the following link/by clicking here
Popular Individual mutual funds sites can be accessed/by clicking here - work in progress - visit this place often to get it.

Useful apps to get your valuation instantly in your smart phone
In order to get portfolio valuation instantly in smart phone, the fund houses are providing mobile apps. You can download the same and register your details to get the portfolio details on finger tips through your smart phone.

List of useful apps and link are provided here ( work in progress - visit this place often to get it.)

All these techniques will help the investor to get the SOA/Portfolio valuation as on the requested date. Most of them are in read only PDF files except some reports which are in excel. Except portfolio report, others will not give return details.

Advanced users can analyse their holdings and tweak their portfolio in order to get better returns and take appropriate investment calls. For Financial adviser to give useful advice, it is better to get single snap short of holdings with more info in single editable files. 

To fill this gap, now third party data aggregation sites are available. The popular ones are Perfios.com and Myuniverse.com. In order to get all reports in one place and to get analytical reports, you should register all your funds individual sites with their respective usernames and passwords. Once you've updated your credentials in these data aggregating sites, they will fetch the data at predetermined frequency and give you updated info whenever you wish to see the same.

Integrating all your fund house holdings under one roof through MF Utility
An alternative to the above service, another service called MF Utility is available. By registering here and getting the Common Account Number, you can see all your fund house holdings in a single place on a real-time basis and you will also able to transact in those funds using single sign on. More details to get the same are given here

These are very powerful utilities, and you have to trust them and share your credentials with them to get useful output from them. The free version will show limited details and will have limited functionality and with the paid version you can do more. If you hold more schemes and have an analytical mind, these third party aggregators will be of lot of help to you.

We can get our SoA in various ways, all we have to do is choose whichever is comfortable for us!!

You can redeem your units by filling the forms available with the respective fund houses/ RTA/Adviser, without having the SoA. PAN number/Folio number and unit holders signature is sufficient to transact in mutual funds.

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