BackDate of SIP mandate can be changed by submitting a transaction slip
You can pause, stop, change, and manage your SIPs either online or by submitting an SIP transaction slip to the AMC
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I have four mutual funds SIPs and the money gets auto-debited on first of every month from my account. I changed jobs recently and now my salary gets credited on fifth of every month. What is the process of changing the date of debit? And, can I stop my auto-debit on these schemes and issue post-dated cheques instead?
—Naresh Gaur
The change of date for your SIPs can be done by submitting an SIP transaction slip requesting for the same. Every mutual fund company has such a common transaction slip, using which any such changes can be taken care of. And yes, most mutual funds also accept post-dated cheques to take care of SIP transactions. However, I do not quite see the advantage of issuing a set of post-dated cheques (which could be liable to be rejected for signature mismatch issues) over a direct debit bank mandate.
A better way to manage your SIPs would be to use one of many digital platforms that are available for this purpose. With these, it would be easy to issue a one-time mandate that will allow you to set-up SIPs in schemes from multiple mutual fund companies at different times without any paperwork. Also, making changes—such as dates of debit, amount, or even schemes—would be possible without visiting the asset management companies’ (AMC) branches or issuing transaction slips. You can pause, stop, change, and manage your SIPs more efficiently at the click of a button on either your browser or mobile at any time of the day.
I am from Jalandhar, Punjab. I have a few investments in mutual funds. I get a CAS (consolidated account statement) in physical form. I wish to stop physical statements and want only eCAS. Can you guide me how to do this?
—Saket Gupta
Consolidated account statements are relatively new facility created by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and implemented by the depository companies National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) and Central Depository Services (India) Ltd (CDSL). All of an investor’s holdings in the capital markets—be they stocks, mutual funds, or derivatives—are listed in an aggregated format in this statement and mailed periodically (monthly, if there were transactions in a month, and half-yearly otherwise). The aggregation is based on the Permanent Account Number (PAN) of the primary account holder. These statements help investors keep a tab on all their investments and not lose sight of any. They also shed light on the current valuation of their holdings across investment types. Recently they have also started including information about commissions paid towards the investment holdings.
The depositories are capable of dispatching these statements in physical and electronic (email) mode. When sent via email, the statements are password protected to add a layer of security to the information. And, yes; you can get the depositories to send you only electronic statements and dispense with the physical mails. Both NSDL and CDSL have eCAS facilities that investors can switch to. In both cases, one can approach their depository account holder (if they have one) to request the switch; or contact the depositories directly as well (on their websites ndslcas.nsdl.com and cdslindia.com.
I want to reduce my tax burden for this financial year. Please suggest some equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS). I can invest up to Rs15,000 a month. I earn Rs60,000 per month and don’t have any financial goals as such. Also, I have a friend who prefers Public Provident Fund (PPF) over ELSS. How does one choose between the two?
—Varun Prasad
There are several advantages to investing in ELSS schemes for reducing your tax burden. For one, they have the lowest lock-in period of 3 years compared to other tax-saving investment options. Second, they invest in the equities markets, which have the potential to deliver the best long-term returns for an investor. For these reasons, ELSS schemes are the preferred entry point into the world of mutual funds for many investors. However, please note that your annual tax saving is capped at Rs1.5 lakh under section 80(c) of the income-tax Act. This section covers several other investment options such as home loan principal, Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) contributions, and insurance payments. You would need to first understand how much tax saving investment you can make, considering all other options that you may already be using. Once you make that determination, you can divide that by the number of months left in this financial year and make your ELSS investments for that amount every month. ICICI Prudential Long-term Equity fund and Invesco India Tax Plan are good options to consider. If you have any money left from the Rs15,000 monthly allocation, invest it in a balanced fund such as HDFC Balanced fund every month as an SIP investment.
Between PPF and ELSS, the latter is definitely superior if one looks at the performance track record of both. This is especially true in these days of steadily declining interest rates. Also, the ELSS funds are subject to a much lower lock-in period.
Srikanth Meenakshi is co-founder and COO, FundsIndia.com.
Queries and views at mintmoney@livemint.com
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