Registrar and transfer agents (RTAs), CAMS and KFintech, recently launched a new common platform for all MF transactions called MF Central (mfcentral.com). Here, we review this web portal and tell you how it fares compared to peers.

Features

Investors can login on the MF Central website with the help of their mobile and PAN card details and check all their MF holdings across AMCs. Through the portfolio tab on the website, investors can view their consolidated holding statement and a detailed portfolio analysis of their MF holdings.

In the current phase, investors can use the portal only for non-financial transactions. These include change in contact details such as e-mail ID or phone number and bank details. One can also request for updating nominee details, bank IFSC, FATCA/CRS declaration, and form 15G/H.

Other services such as status change from minor to major, consolidation of folios, correction of data in folios, registering multiple bank mandates and opting for income distribution cum capital withdrawal option (earlier called dividend plans), are also available on the portal.

However, currently these services (including features such as consolidated statement and portfolio view) can only be requested for holdings with the same registered mobile number, under ‘Single’ or ‘Anyone or Survivor’ mode of holding. Joint holdings will not be integrated on the platform.

Besides, the service requests currently exclude ETFs (even excluded from consolidated portfolio views) as well as MF units held in demat form.

Future phases

Eventually, the portal will separately list the unregistered MF units (with different or no mobile phone number) in the portfolio holdings, and investors must register them in MF Central in order to place any other service requests. Registration can be done simply by updating the mobile numbers under the ‘Unregistered Folio’ section.

Conceptualised to go live in three distinct phases, by the end of this calendar year, the portal also aims to cover financial transactions such as buy or sell holdings and/or modify, pause, or cancel SIP, in its second phase.

Apart from integrating the platform for other service providers such as distributors, on-boarding of new investors will be launched in phase three.

Transmission of fund units (transfer of MF units to legal heir upon death of investor), which is currently available only in physical mode, will soon be available in a digital mode (barring certain physical aspects such as document exchange) on the MF Central platform.

How it compares

Most of the services currently featured on the platform are also available with other digital platforms such as MF Utilities (MFU), and other MF aggregators such as Groww, PayTM Money and Kuvera. One can view consolidated holdings and a portfolio analysis of their MF holdings on any of these platforms.

Besides most of these existing apps and portals consolidate all MF holdings, including demat and ETF holdings, which has not yet been launched on the MF Central portal. While a few MF aggregators may miss aggregating data from select AMCs with whom they haven’t partnered yet, the MFU platform or app comes to your rescue.

MF Central is yet to launch the capital gains statement, which can be a useful tool for investors while filing their yearly tax returns. However, the capital gains statement is already live on MFU platform and on aggregator apps such as Kuvera.

While many features including financial transactions are yet to be launched on the MF Central portal, it scores on its user interface, in terms of navigability, ease of use, etc, when compared to MF U. However, aggregator apps score higher given their charting tools, and fund performance and ratio analysis views, which are not available on the MF Central portal.

In terms of customer servicing and query handling, while investors can now benefit from the FAQs listed on the website, the online chat feature will soon be made available on the MF Central portal too.

Do note that MF Central is now only available as a website and not as a mobile application, which can be a turn-down for many tech-savvy rookie investors.

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