How will you benefit from investing early in mutual funds?

If you are a mutual fund investor you would very well be aware of this email: “Dear Investor, attached is your Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) containing financial transactions across all mutual funds during the month of June-2021. CAS is sent in an electronic form (eCAS) and is the same as a paper statement. This offers you even more value, convenience, and security with benefits such as electronic storage and anytime/anywhere access.” In reality, as an investor how many of us even go through it and analyse it thoroughly? The CAS is simply a declaration of all of your mutual fund holdings as an investor.

The CAS is sent to investors who hold their mutual fund holdings partly or wholly in demat account with Central Depository Services Limited (CDSL) or National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) under a common Permanent Account Number (PAN). The details of an investor’s financial transactions in mutual funds folios and depository accounts are provided by CAS.

When is it generated?

Other platforms like Computer Age Management Services (CAMS) and Karvy also allow investors to obtain their aggregated statements through email under a single PAN. However, for doing so the investors must register their email address such as registrar and transfer agency (RTA). That said, it is generated on a monthly basis with regards to common PAN with the RTAs and depositories.

Why is it important for investors to understand?

— The CAS only displays financial transactions such as unit purchases, redemptions, including maturity payments, switches, systematic transactions such as Systematic Investment Plan (SIP), Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP), Systematic Transfer Plan (STP), dividend payments or reinvestment of dividends, scheme mergers, bonus unit allotment, and so on.

— Changes of address, bank account information, nomination registration, and other non-financial transactions are not included.

— A monthly CAS will only feature portfolios that have had financial transactions during the previous month (provided valid PAN numbers are provided in respect of all investors in the folio). For example, if a person has three portfolios but only transacts in two of them in a month, the CAS for that month will only show the two active portfolios and not the third.

— One important point investors should note is that no CAS will be issued in case of no transaction done for that month.

— For the investors who have not made any financial transactions at all, the CAS is issued every half year at the end of the six months i.e., September/March.

— In case of mutual fund investor who has registered their email id with their respective Mutual Funds will get a pdf document within 5 days after the financial transaction has taken place.

— CAS assists investors in developing a more effective investment management strategy, resulting in less paperwork. The CAS also indicates how much one has received in redemptions and dividends over time.

— Furthermore, CAS can be a very valuable tool for computing taxes because it gives investors access to all of their consolidated mutual fund folios in one spot.