SEBI - RTA inter-operable Platform for enhancing investors’ experience in Mutual Fund transactions/ service requests

 SEBI - RTA inter-operable Platform for enhancing investors’ experience in Mutual Fund transactions/ service requests

           SEBI announced a path-breaking customer initiative for Mutual Fund Investors.

An R&T agent is an intermediary who takes care of the back-end processes of a mutual fund, processing all financial and nonfinancial transactions.

In this digital era, more and more Mutual Fund Investors are comfortable to transact via Internet Platforms.

The physical visits to RTA brick and mortar offices is coming down.

Hence, there was a need to enhance the customer service experience to Mutual Fund Investors.

In this regard SEBI vide Cir dt.  July 26, 2021 addressed to All Mutual Funds (MFs)/ Asset Management Companies (AMCs)/Trustee Companies/ Board of Trustees of Mutual Funds/ Registrar and Transfer Agents of Mutual Funds (RTAs), Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) Depositories unveiled the roadmap for an inter-operable RTA platform.

          The main objective of this circular is to enhance the investor’s experience across the full life-cycle of Mutual Funds investments.

          As on today, the RTAs operate island like platforms. These platforms do not talk to each other, though the activities on the MF RTAs are almost common.

Investors have to hop from one RTA platform to another platform to avail the various services of RTAs.

          EG: I have investments in ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, DSP Mutual Fund, Edelweiss Mutual Fund, Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund, Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund, Nippon India Mutual Fund.

The RTAs for the above MFs are CAMS or KFIN. In fact the most popular MF RTAs in India are CAMS and KFIN.

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For the convenience of Mutual Fund investors, Registrar and Transfer Agents (RTA) CAMS and KFintech have come together to provide a consolidated account statement. This statement provides a comprehensive view of the investor’s holdings across Funds serviced by all the RTAs.

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          This means in the backend; the individual RTAs already speak to each other and provide few services to MF investors.

          Taking this ahead, SEBI has advised RTAs to   implement standardized practices and plan for system interoperability amongst themselves to jointly develop a common industry wide platform. The platform is to   deliver an integrated, harmonized, elevated experience to the  investors  across  the industry.

SEBI has advised AMCs and Depositories to facilitate the RTAs for development of the proposed platform.

The aforesaid platform shall, inter alia in phases, enable a user-friendly interface for investors for execution of mutual fund transactions viz. purchase, redemption, switch  etc., initiation and  tracking of  service  requests viz.  change of  email  id  / contact number / bank account details etc., initiation and tracking of queries and complaints, access investment related reports viz. mutual fund holdings (both in demat  and standard Statement  of  Account), transactions  reports(including historic    transactions), capital    gains/loss    report, details    of    unclaimed dividend/redemption etc.

 Ultimately, through this platform investors  will  be  able  to access these  services for  all  Mutual  Funds in  an  integrated  manner.

For this platform to be a success,  AMCs,  RTAs  and  Depositories  need to  to  provide  data via  APIs  on  a  real  time  basis  to the  proposed  platform.

Once the APIs are in place the data flow will be seamless.

Further, in the long run, SEBI envisages that this platform may provide services to the distributors, registered investment advisors, AMCs, Stock Exchange platforms and digital platforms for transacting in mutual funds to further augment ease of investing and servicing of investors through the above stakeholders in consultation with SEBI.

The full Go Live Date as advised by SEBI is December 31, 2021

AMCs  and  Depositories  shall  facilitate  and  RTAs  shall  make  the  aforesaid platform    operational    in    a    phased    manner(starting    with    non-financial transactions)and shall be fully operational by December 31, 2021.

 

Who is an R&T agent? An R&T agent maintains records of every mutual fund transaction on behalf of the fund house, through his network of offices across the country.

In this digital era, more and more Mutual Fund Investors are comfortable to transact via Internet Platforms.

 

Disclaimer: These are my personal views. The bottom line is Mission #LessCashNotCashLess