Click to play videoMumbai: The pan card and the NFO application go together now with fund houses selling them together.
This month, SEBI made a pan card, or application proof, mandatory for mutual fund investments.
Since then, retail investments have fallen 40-50 per cent. Fund houses like Reliance, SBI, JM Financial and others, have begun to provide customers with pan card application forms along with mutual fund forms.
They have also tied up with Karvy, UTI Securities and Bajaj Capital to speed up the process.
“The AMCs have taken the initiative to partner with us to facilitate many investors to come to our branches wherever they are facing a query of pan card. We offer them the entire service of filling up the applications, providing the form 49 A, the appropriate ticket which is to be filed with the form and depositing with the concerned authority for processing,” said Senior Vice President, Bajaj Capital, Surajit Mishra.
Reliance, HDFC, SBI, ICICI Prudential, assisting investors, Reliance Mutual Funds, India's largest fund house, had retail investments fall by half since July 2 when SEBI issued the ruling.
It's now hiring photographers and pan card agents at no cost to the customer.
Fund houses like SBI, ICICI Prudential and HDFC have also started educating customers on the importance of the pan card.
Meanwhile, JM Financial, which launched JM contra fund on Monday, is also helping customers to acquire pan cards.
“We are tying up with intermediaries or companies, which are allowed to either, facilitate or allot pan. To a great extent for this NFO we will even fund it because the cost of applying for pan is Rs 73-74,” said Head of Sales and Marketing, JM Financial AMC, Bhanu Katoch.
Even as fund houses set up shops for pan cards, fund houses see high expenditure on the cards hurting their expansion plans.
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