Social media lately has been abuzz with a barrage of rants of mutual fund investors who are facing prolonged delays in processing of transactions.
Ambica financial Services highlighted through a tweet recently that there are several pending transactions for numerous investors in relation to their SIPs they paid.
"This is very much painful to convince a retail client that his first txn in MF is pending for >15 days for some technical reasons," they wrote.
However, Computer Age Management Services (CAMS), a mutual fund transfer agency, responded to this and gave its side of the story. It states that there are 24 unprocessed transactions.
"These few transactions are pending to be processed due to non-availability of investors bank account used for payment in the reverse feed, provided by payment service providers / banks," wrote CAMS on the micro-blogging website.
While assuring the resolution to these grievances, CAMS also wrote: “We are actively following up with service providers/banks for the account numbers to verify the third-party payments, if any.”
Locking out of investments?
Besides the delay in processing of transactions, there are other issues, too, which mutual fund investors are facing. “CAMS stopped capturing email Id and mobile number of transactions via Mutual Fund Utilities (MFU), without these details, investor is prone to being locked out of investment completely,” said Amol Joshi, Founder, PlanRupee Investment Services.
He also asserted that confirmation of transaction is taking no fewer than six days.
Other transaction processing that is taking longer is third party payment check. "As a result of this, unit allotment and folio creation is delayed for days," he says.
He also highlights another problem which the investors are facing while carrying out transactions via MFU. What, in fact, is happening is for the transactions routed through MFU, even when new folio is created, CAMS allots units in old folio.
Mr Joshi also said that the mutual fund aggregator platform MF Central was supposed to be operational to ensure interoperability. However, this has yet to happen.
While offering a possible solution, Mahesh Mirpuri, a mutual fund distributor, said on the social media platform: “One possible big risk to the mutual fund industry is the presence of only 2 RTAs - Registrars. Total dependence on 2 RTAs.”
“As the industry grows, the AMCs need be able to control service levels independently. Competition ensures service levels are maintained,” he adds.