Do I need paper statements of my mutual fund holdings?

With the introduction and increasing popularity of online portals for mutual funds, holding paper statements has become redundant. Investors today can invest in mutual funds via online as well as the offline mode. Online portals like Groww are increasingly becoming the preferred mode of investment for the new generation investors. In fact, online platforms for mutual fund investments are gaining a lot of popularity, not just with the youth but with the older generations as well.

Most of these portals have tie-ups with banks to facilitate easy, secure and quick fund transfer. Such portals also provide the convenience of having everything at a click, without any complexities and huge piles of paperwork inherent in the offline mode.

E-mails from the official websites from whom you have routed your online mutual fund investments or your account summary at the portal are proof enough to claim your ownership. Having said that, you can still keep a printout of the account summary incase you want to be extra cautious. You certainly don’t need to wait for any paper certificates of the funds, the digital form would suffice.

This shift can be attributed to the numerous facilities provided online. The portals have safe and secured payment and clearing systems. They involve systems like Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), Electronic Clearing System (ECS), NEFT, RTGS and IMPS in a bid to go paperless and facilitate quick exchanges. In addition to secure payment facilities, these portals provide convenience. The portals show real time movement and data for the various avenues to invest in. A consolidated statement of all your financial and non-financial transactions can be tracked on a single screen across various schemes. You can filter them to see the desired data. To sum it up, with everything going digital, you don’t really need paper statements of your mutual fund holdings.

After an investor invests in a mutual fund, he gets statements of the investments made in an Asset Management Company (AMC).

If an investor has invested in say 2-3 funds of HDFC Asset Management Company Ltd, then he gets a consolidated statement for all the funds invested in. This statement is sent via mail to the investor at regular intervals. The frequency of getting the statements can be changed by calling up the AMC and requesting them to change the frequency of getting statements.

The same thing works for other Asset Management Companies as well. On Groww, all your mutual fund investments will be shown in a monthly statement which gets delivered to your email.