Here’s how to track all your stocks and MFs in one place
6 min read . Updated: 27 Jan 2023, 01:31 PM IST
Premium- Fintech platforms aggregate your investments using data imports and manual entries
- To seamlessly import all your MF data, the platform must be able to support data import from CAMS and NSDL
Fintech platforms aggregate your investments using a combination of data imports and manual entries depending on the asset.
How do you know that you are making the right investments? For that, it is crucial to know the right financial products. And, how do you assess the performance of your overall portfolio and the assets within it? Well, you need to keep track of all your investments. But this can be tough unless you can aggregate the data on all investments in one place.
Fret not, for help is at hand. Modern-day investing platforms or fintech apps can not only aggregate your data on most investments but also provide valuable insights on your portfolio that help you invest better. Mint reached out to MProfit, Kuvera, and Value Research, and to a few users of INDmoney to understand how it works.
Investments and more
Today, most fintech platforms facilitate easy import of investment data related to stocks and mutual funds (MFs). Data on fixed deposits, bonds, gold, and public provident fund have to be entered manually.
MProfit, however, goes a step further—it facilitates auto-import of data from a user’s PMS (portfolio management service) and AIF (Alternate Investment Fund) email transaction statements. This can be particularly useful for high networth individuals. MProfit also seems to be the only platform that facilitates import of data from contract notes. A contract note provides you details (such as price, quantity, etc.) of all stock trades conducted on a day, and is emailed by your broker.
“You have to first download your historical trade file from your broker account and upload that to your MProfit account. After that, you can use the auto forward feature in your email settings to update your trades on a daily basis," says Atik Shah, an MProfit co-founder. As a result, not only do its users have access to their stock holdings (which is possible on other platforms) but also their detailed stock transactions. For someone interested in analysing their stock trades, this can be a useful feature. You can also track your F&O (futures and options) trades on MProfit.
Most fintech platforms also allow you to add the investment details of your family members, thus enabling a consolidated view of the entire family’s investment portfolio. This can be a good way to keep your family informed about investments which may otherwise be spread across different financial institutions. Abhishek Aggarwal, an e-commerce professional, says, “Kuvera and INDmoney allow me to combine my family’s user accounts. I have read-only access to my wife’s investments, and she has a similar access to mine. If something untoward were to happen me, she will be aware of all my investments."
Many investing platforms also offer a range of deep insights into your portfolio that help you invest better. These insights can vary across platforms, and within the same platform between paid and free subscribers. For example, only premium members on Value Research’s ‘My Investments’ have access to its liquidity analysis. This tells users how much of their portfolio is liquid—that is, redeemable without any exit load.
A few platforms go beyond tracking only your investments—they can keep track of expenses including credit card spends and loans, as well as display your updated credit score. To track your expenses, you will have to provide consent to the fintech app to access relevant SMSs received on your mobile phone.
Most investing platforms also provide a capital gains tax report which can be very useful at the time of filing your income tax returns. Shashank Bharadwaj, a communications and marketing professional, says the challenge of tracking his investments drove him to be an INDmoney premium subscriber. “I’m now able to see my latest data on net worth along with a consolidated investment portfolio across platforms. In addition, I get access to INDmoney’s financial planners, so I find it very affordable."
How to aggregate data
Most platforms or their users that Mint spoke with said that MF and stock investments data can be easily imported to these platforms. “One can easily import data from an investor’s consolidated account statement (CAS) from an RTA such as CAMS or KFintech, or from NSDL and CDSL," says Ashutosh Gupta, senior vice president, Value Research. CAMS is the country’s largest RTA, or registrar and transfer agent, and manages and maintains MF transactions.
The process of how this is done can vary across platforms. For example, in case of Value Research, you can upload your CAS onto the platform for data import. With MProfit, a user can set up an automatic email forward for the CAS from their Gmail or Outlook mail accounts to MProfit. Note that the RTA CAS only has a record of MF holdings held in non-demat form. Any MF investments made via your brokerage account (held in demat form) will not reflect in this CAS. CDSL or NSDL, which has a record of all your investments in the securities markets, however, will show such MF holdings in its CAS. For a platform to be able to seamlessly import all your MF data, it must be able to support data import from all such sources. This may not always be the case.
When it comes to stock investments, many platforms require you to authorize your broker to share data that needs to be imported to the platform. “Users have to login to their demat accounts and provide an authorization to the broker to share access of their holdings with the platform," explains Jatin Bhatia, VP business, smallcase. Alternatively, you can download the statement, and then upload it on to the platform.
A platform that enables NPS (national pension system) to be tracked will typically require you to download the transactions statement from NSDL, and then upload it into the platform. For most other investments however, one may have to rely on manual entries on many platforms, though there could be variations. For example, Kuvera allows users to manually enter data on gold investments, but not on fixed deposits. On Value Research, once you manually key in the details on your sovereign gold bonds (series and amount invested) and public provident fund (amount and date of investment) investments, the platform will calculate how your investment has grown over time.
Data privacy concerns
Sharing of data with investing platforms may, however, raises concerns around data privacy. A user who had signed up for a fintech platform a few years ago was concerned by how keying in his few basic details had fetched all his EPF (employee provident fund) investment details on the platform. While no data import into these platforms happens without user consent, there could still be potential risks to watch out for. “The case where fintech platforms import data from entities such as brokers after authorization from the user is better from a data privacy point of view than where users provide access to investment updates on their email account via automatic forwards," says Tejas Maniar, chief digital officer, Fino Payments Bank. “There could be chances of data getting exposed in the latter situation," he adds.
Before you sign up for any platform, clearly understand the extent of access to personal data that you are providing. And given the wide range of investment products covered by different platforms, it’s worth finding out which platform will be most relevant for you.
