RTAs to develop integrated mutual funds transaction platform for investors

The market regulator, SEBI, in its circular released on Monday has asked mutual fund companies and registrars & transfer agents (RTAs) to bring an integrated mutual funds transaction platform for investors. It has been mentioned that RTAs should develop a common industry-wide platform for the purchase and sale of mutual funds and also, to handle service requests.  

This will make it more convenient for the existing as well as future investors to transact and avail services while remaining invested in mutual funds. Through this platform, investors will be able to access these services for all mutual funds in an integrated manner. In this regard, AMCs, RTAs, and depositories shall take necessary measures to provide data via APIs on a real-time basis to the proposed platform. Additionally, RTAs and depositories shall also share their respective data feeds between themselves for the generation of investment-related reports.  

The circular has also specified that AMCs and depositories shall facilitate and RTAs shall make the aforesaid platform operational in a phased manner, which will start with non-financial transactions and shall be fully operational by December 31, 2021.  

We believe that this is a welcome move by the regulator and will help in bringing more investors into mutual fund investment. This will also help the investors to manage their portfolios in a more efficient way. Now, there are more than 40 mutual fund houses. If an investor has to make a  portfolio of mutual fund schemes, he has to either visit individual fund houses or RTAs to get it executed, which many times is time-consuming and may dissuade investors from investing. A common platform contemplated will help investors to have a wonderful investing experience.