Covernote. Simplify process of investment

In a departure from our usual CoverNote topic of insurance, let me air some rants about the paperwork and processes in the management of investments. The time to review tax and investments for tax planning is towards the end of the financial year.

I take the opportunity to check if nominations are in place, whether any change of address, contact information and so on are needed.

These things can easily be forgotten and will come back to bite one in the ankle later.

Step one: Check insurance policies, various accounts — savings bank, securities, demat and trading, pension and so on — to see if contact information is current and accurate.

Relevant forms

Call your bank or investment advisor or locate your service providers’ websites and get hold of the relevant forms.

The same goes for KYC. Regardless of whether the institutions remind you or not, or whether you are getting a load of fake SMSes threatening you to update your KYC or not, do check each account and investment to see if any re-KYC is pending viz. if Aadhaar linking is required, if PAN linking is required and so on.

It will save you loads of time and grief at a later time when you may have to do these but not at leisure or in emotional comfort.

Then comes the biggie — nomination. Right now, there is a sustained campaign to nominate all your financial investments or sign an undertaking that you don’t wish to make a nomination. It’s a good move to focus the investors’ minds.

A person who could otherwise put it off is now forced to sign on the dotted line owning up the responsibility for not nominating.

Forms, processes

What about the rants? They are mainly of three categories. Forms, processes and redundancy. Here is a sneak preview.

Each institution gives out a different nomination form. And, there are different forms for nomination and renomination (that’s for when you change your mind about giving your FD proceeds to one child and want to give it to another!)

Everyone, of course, needs your personal and contact information and those of the nominee/s. Some need the nominees to sign the form and want their KYC documents as well.

So, you have to wait for the child who lives abroad to come to India and time your nomination paperwork accordingly. We are only scratching the surface.

CoverNote will be back with more hair-raising nomination adventures.

(The writer is a business journalist specialising in insurance & corporate history)

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