The regulator had asked AMCs to de-duplicate folios in its 22 August, 2011 circular.
SEBI has written a letter to AMCs asking them about the status on de-duplication of folios, confirm industry officials. It has asked fund houses as to “what have they done so far to de-duplicate folios.”
In its 22 August 2011 circular, SEBI had asked fund houses to de-duplicate folios or investor accounts in six months. A few AMCs say that they will intimate SEBI that consolidation of folios is happening at the R&T agent level.
The basic idea behind de-duplicating folios is to find out how many new investors are entering the industry. PAN and address are the two main filters through which R&T agents identify new investors.
“Earlier in the absence of KYC, investors used to open a new folio every time they invested because they didn’t remember their folio numbers. Now with KYC coming in, many retail investors and companies invest through existing folios to avoid documentation. Earlier, investors were holding three to four folios across AMCs. Now it has come down. This is one of the reasons why folios are declining,” says an operations head of a private sector fund house. Rough estimates suggest that an investor holds at least two-three folios now across AMCs.
R&T agents CAMS and Karvy, which together handle a majority of AMCs, are de-duplicating folios based on the AMCs serviced by them. Industry officials say that SEBI wants to de-duplicate folios between both the R&T agents, which could be a mammoth task as AMCs might not wish to share investor data.
CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) possesses the centralised database of all mutual fund investors. As per AMFI data, there are currently 3.76 crore folios as on March 2012.
