Maintaining a FundsIndia Account

At FundsIndia, we are proud of supporting long-term investments of our investors. Some of our investors open investment schedules with us that last 10 or 15 years if not more. Over such long time periods, life moves on and things various things change. We could change bank accounts, add new ones, wish to change the nominee for our investments, or move residences and so on. How do we manage these changes with respect to our investments?

We try and make these changes as easily manageable as possible. In most cases, such changes will require you to communicate in writing (with proof as appropriate) to us (FundsIndia) instead of writing different letters to all the different AMCs where you have folios/accounts. In this section, let's cover some of these changes and see how to maintain your FundsIndia account and keep your investments current.

Changes covered in this article

1. Change of communication address
2. Change of permanent (KYC) address
3. Change of primary bank account
4. Adding a second bank account
5. Change of nominee
6. Change of email id
7. Change of mobile number
8. Change of residency status (NRI to Resident)

Change of communication address

At FundsIndia, we accept and record two different addresses - one used for all mutual fund investments (the permanent or KYC address), and another that is used for all FundsIndia communications (the communication address).

The second address - the communication address - is used exclusively by FundsIndia to communicate any physical mail to the investor. This could be an address of convenience - it could be a temporary address or an office address - that is subject to frequent change.
This address is not used in mutual fund transactions and is not communicated to the AMCs.

Changing this address is very simple, and does not require any physical communication. If you'd like your FundsIndia documents to delivered elsewhere, all you need to do is login to your account, click on 'My Info' and choose 'Change communication address' from the left menu. Once here, you can present your new communication address and you are done!

Change of permanent (KYC) address

This address - the permanent or KYC address - is the one that is submitted to AMC along with all the folio transactions. Changing this address requires a little more legwork than changing the communication address.

However, please remember, that if you move and if your old KYC address is no longer valid, it is imperative that you follow this below process and get your KYC address updated. AMCs communicate their statements to this address, and use this address to mail any redemption cheque if direct electronic credit to your bank account either fails or is not feasible. So, it is important that this address be changed.

To change your KYC address, you would be required to file a KYC change form at a Point-of-service. You can send it to the FundsIndia office for processing or get it done locally in your town - just like you did for your original KYC processing. You will need a proof of address for your new address just like you did at the time of KYC registration. If you are sending it to FundsIndia for processing it would need to be notarized or attested by a gazetted officer.

This KYC change form can be found in CVL India's website's 'Downloads' section - www.cvlindia.com.

Once you submit this KYC change form, please send us an email noting that you have submitted the same with the new address. We will update our system accordingly. If you had sent the KYC change form to us for processing, we will automatically update our system with the new address after the submission.

Change of primary bank account

Your primary bank account is the account that gets attached to your mutual fund folios by default. Typically, this is the bank account that you used at the time of opening your FundsIndia account.

To change this account to a different account, we have an established process. Please login to your account, and click on 'My Info'. From here, you can choose 'Change bank details' from the left menu. In the ensuing screen, you will be required to provide the details of your new bank account. When you are done, a pre-formatted letter will be generated for you in the 'Downloads' section of your account.

You will need to sign that letter, and send it to us with a cancelled cheque of your new bank account. The cancelled cheque would need to carry your name on it (printed). If it does not, you will need to additionally send an account statement that shows your name and the account number.

When we receive these (the letter and the proof), we will first initiate a change of bank in your existing folios by corresponding with the AMCs. Once these changes are done, we will update your FundsIndia account's primary bank account.

Please note that if you have ongoing SIP investments using your older bank account, that will not be changed by this process. The SIP debits will continue to happen from the old account. The only way to change that would be to stop the ongoing SIP, and start new SIP schedules with the new bank account.

Adding a second bank account

FundsIndia supports two bank account per investment services account. Adding a second bank account to your FundsIndia account is beneficial in two ways:

1. You can use any one of your two accounts to make investments from, and
2. Your folio can be associated with any one of the two bank accounts.

To add a second bank account to your FundsIndia account, you will need to follow a process similar to changing your primary bank account. Please login to your account, click on 'My Info' and choose 'Add secondary bank details' from the left menu. In the ensuing screen, you will be required to provide the details of your new bank account. When you are done, a pre-formatted letter will be generated for you in the 'Downloads' section of your account.

You will need to sign that letter, and send it to us with a cancelled cheque of your new bank account. The cancelled cheque would need to carry your name on it (printed). If it does not, you will need to additionally send an account statement that shows your name and the account number.

When we receive this letter, if all is in order, we will activate your second bank account in your FundsIndia account.

Change of nominee

The process of changing the nominee in your FundsIndia account is a simple one. You can also use this process if your FundsIndia account was opened without any nominee and you would like to add one.

You would need to send us a signed letter - with both your signature as well as the nominee's signature - to activate the new nominee.

The letter should be as follows:

Date:

From

Investor name
PAN number

Sub: Change of nominee

Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to change the nominee information on my FundsIndia account. The new nominee details are:

Name:
Address:

Please find the signature of the nominee below.

I request you to use the above nominee details for all my folios.

Thanking You,

Yours Faithfully,

(<<Investor name>>)

Signature of the Nominee:

(<<Nominee name>>)

Once we receive this letter, we will verify the signature of the investor and activate the new nominee in the system.

Change of email id

At FundsIndia, as you probably know, your email id doubles as your login id. If you'd like to change this, or if you'd like to change the email id that gets communicated to the AMC as part of investor details, you would need to, well, send us an email request for the same.

This email needs to be sent separately both from the new email address as well as from the old email address. This would allow us to authenticate that you are indeed the owner of the new email id.

The email change request should specifically mention the login email id of the investor and the PAN number apart from requesting the change to the new email address.

Change of mobile number

To change your registered mobile number for your FundsIndia account, you would simply need to send us an email request from your registered email id with the new mobile number.

Change of residency status

If you are currently investing as an NRI, and you have moved back to India, you would need to change the residency status of your investments.

This is a slightly involved process, but it is important to get it right so that further transactions on your folios happen smoothly in accordance to RBI and IT laws.

In overview, there are two parts to the process, a KYC process, and an AMC process. We (FundsIndia) will help you with both the processes, but specifically with the AMC process.

KYC process

The Know your customer registration has a record of your residency status. When you have moved back to India, you would need to change this as well as updating the address. This can be done using the standard KYC change form (available at www.cvlindia.com) with a proof of address.

AMC process

Some AMCs take note of your residency status change from the KYC records, but some don't. So, we cannot take chances with this. We need to communicate to the AMCs regarding this change.

Also, you would need to change your investment bank from an NRE/NRO account to a resident account. An Indian resident cannot hold an NRE/NRO account, much less invest through it.

Towards this end, we need you to send us a letter with the following:

1. The letter needs to specify that your residency status has changed from NRI to resident
2. The letter needs to specify that you have submitted a KYC request in this regard.
3. The letter needs to provide details of your new resident bank account
4. A proof of new bank account (cancelled cheque with printed name) needs to be attached.

Once this letter is received by us, we will communicate this out to all the AMCs where folios are being maintained for this investor, and get the status updated (as well as the bank account). All future investments can now be made as a resident Indian using an Indian bank account.