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This year, direct mutual fund plans have taken off in a big way. This is exciting news not just because there is a single window to invest in direct mutual fund. In order to grow these portals must advertise*. Meaning commission-free investing will be the USP. Meaning more and more people will understand that their current online mutual fund investment platform is not free!
* with the exception of MF Utility which had to send out an reassuring note to sacred mutual fund distributors that it will not advertise. It will not, but hey, there is enough advertisement for it here and at Facebook group Asan Ideas For Wealth!
For example, Anish Mohan was kind enough to write a detailed guide: How to buy and sell direct mutual funds using MF Utility Portal
I had earlier announced the start of two such portals:
Direct Mutual Fund Investment/advisory Portal Invezta is now live!
ORO Wealth: Yet another Direct mutual fund investment portal! This had a partial comparison of direct mutual fund investment portals.
Now with Smart.Unovest.Co also live, it is time to a bit more detailed comparison, thanks to the efforts of Kishan Sen Laskar and Anish Mohan. This comparison is with the information available up to now and is likely to be modified as these portal evolve (and more come up!).
Background: In order to understand how these portals operate and their limitations, some background is necessary.
MF Utility is run by 25 AMCs. It is free and only offers transaction facility in direct plans.
Other portals are privately run and are either standalone (Invezta) or are dependent on MF Utility for Transaction.
All private portal will have a RIA no. That is, registered investment adviser no. This is like the mutual fund distributors ARN no which allows them to claim commissions on their clients transactions.
The RIA no is for direct plans alone and does not entail any commission.
They will be able to obtain feeds, that is the transaction statement to update portfolios only if a folio contains their RIA no.
So if you make a new transaction in a new folio via their portal, the RIA no will be automatically associated with it.
A new transaction in an existing folio can be made via the private portals only if
- existing regular funds are switched to direct funds with RIA no or
- existing direct funds (which will not have ARN or RIA) have to be switched to direct funds with RIA code.
What about updating existing direct fund holdings which do not have the RIA code? The portals are trying to work out an arrangement with MF Utility to get the feeds with the permission of the account holder.
In the meantime, Unovest using an interface powered by a company called Accord Finitech has allowed users to upload all existing holdings using the consolidated account statement from CAMS.
Invezta is working on ways to do the same. Between me, Kishan and Anish, we have tried out,
Between me, Kishan and Anish, we have tried out,
Please note that all three of us are no associated with any portal. The only purpose of this post is the dissemination of information with a pinch of insight. Before taking a call on using such portals, be sure to read and understand all features.
Comparison of Direct Mutual Fund Transaction Portals
The image below is a comparison based on our current experience and details found at their site and is liable to be changed. If you are associated with any of the portals (owner/member), please do point out discrepancies if any and I will correct them.
My recommendation
If you a regular plan investor, switch to direct!
If you have only a few funds and do not mind logging into individual AMCs, then look no further.
If you are a new/old investor looking for a plain vanilla transaction portal, choose MF Utility.
If you want goal tracking features and/or fund recommendations and don’t mind robo-advisory, my vote would be Invezta. For new investors, there is no issue joining Invezta. Existing mutual fund investors will have to wait for Invezta to roll out their consolidation features.
The reason is, Invezta for the kind of goal tracking and portfolio insights it offers, comes at a pretty attractive price. The goal tracking at Unovest is a little too simple for my taste (at least for the moment). There are free online mutual fund screeners available at
If one has to pay for Unovest mutual fund screening (not yet live) then it better be better than these options (at the first two, forget freefincal).
I have not explored Bharosa Club and Oro Wealth and hence cannot comment on them.
If you prefer interacting with a fee-only SEBI registered advisor, stick to MF Utility. As robo advisor recommendations may conflict with that of the advisor.
I request users of these portals to provide feedback here so that it can help the community.
Credits: Kishan Sen Laskar and Anish Mohan for promptly responding to all questions and editing the above table. Thank you guys. Such posts will not be possible without your support.
Do check out these related articles:
About the Author
M. Pattabiraman(PhD) is the author and owner of freefincal.com. He is an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras since Aug 2006. Follow @freefincal “Pattu” as he is popularly known, has co-authored two print-books, You can be rich too with goal based investing (CNBC TV18) and Gamechanger and seven other free e-books on various topics of money management. He is a patron and co-founder of “Fee-only India” an organisation to promote unbiased, commission-free investment advice.
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I thank you sir from bottom of my heart. You are doing wonderful job for people like me.
Our Pleasure !
I’ve been trying these portals myself and I found both Invezta and Unovest very prompt in resolving my queries.
For me, the big deal is reporting. I want to be able to slice and dice my holdings so that I can find out things such as how many of my liquid funds are say more than 1 year old.
I’ve transferred some of my holdings to Invezta and will soon know how good it is for existing holdings. As you mentioned, the process involves changing RIA in those existing funds. I just sent them my folio numbers and they generated all the forms etc for me. Now waiting for AMCs to actually make that change.
I uploaded my CAMS account statement on Unovest and i’m not entirely happy with the outcome. Many transactions show an error and so my Unovest portfolio doesn’t match with actual one. But I am not giving up yet. Will try a few more times and then see.
I also tried Orowealth but it just opens an MFU screen for every transactions and there’s not much by way of reporting.
You can bet on Invezta in the matter of reporting. Sharad Singh, CEO of Invezta is a great mind being from IIM-A alumnus and known him through a common friend who happens to be his junior. The reporting and analytics part is already on his radar and he will surely evolve it based on your feedback. Being a systems guy myself with core ERP implementation and Business Intelligence background, I know how important are data analytics and I am sure he will not let us down.
Great post, as always.
I’ve been trying these portals myself and I found both Invezta and Unovest very prompt in resolving my queries.
For me, the big deal is reporting. I want to be able to slice and dice my holdings so that I can find out things such as how many of my liquid funds are say more than 1 year old.
I’ve transferred some of my holdings to Invezta and will soon know how good it is for existing holdings. As you mentioned, the process involves changing RIA in those existing funds. I just sent them my folio numbers and they generated all the forms etc for me. Now waiting for AMCs to actually make that change.
I uploaded my CAMS account statement on Unovest and i’m not entirely happy with the outcome. Many transactions show an error and so my Unovest portfolio doesn’t match with actual one. But I am not giving up yet. Will try a few more times and then see.
I also tried Orowealth but it just opens an MFU screen for every transactions and there’s not much by way of reporting.
Great review. Btw, have you reviewed Quantum AMC ? That is India’s first direct mutual fund. Much before 2013!
This is a comparison of portals that provide you the service to buy Mutual Funds in Direct plans as known as Transaction Aggregator. Quantum is a AMC or Mutual Fund house and hence outside the scope of this review.
Very nice compilation in a single place and sheet, thanks a lot for all the efforts in bringing financial wisdom to the audience…
Wishing you most and more..
You are welcome…
Thank you. Our pleasure..
I am not able to understand why there is a rush for offering third party operated direct mf investment sites.
When MF Utility is already available. At all the sites, I am required to have a CAN. As long as I have CAN, I can very easily and effectively do my transactions on MFU. MFU also has features of ‘consolidation’ of all accounts and schemes which you require for at a glance kind of view, analysis and decision.
Further why pay some fee for a so called ‘premium features’ when it is all available free.
All the more, why pay a fee for availing ‘robo advisory’ services.
It does not take more than half-an-hour to do all kinds of analysis through any good site, like MFU, VRO and take your own decision.
Well, people like plain dosa, but there is a section who will want masala dosa, cheese onion dosa, masala cheese dosa and even chicken dosa ! Hence it is up to the individual’s taste. The companies must have seen enough traction to offer such services. Therefore let the individuals have dosa as per their wish ! 🙂
I perfer AMC website, MF utility for transactions + perfios for reporting.
Absolutely this is also a method many people like. Don’t know if the PPFAS have been interfaced in perfios.
Advisesure also offers Direct MF transactions I think.
we are required to check that. thanks for the lead.
is there any problem having direct AMCs’ ONLINE ACCOUNTS and CAN, MFUtility being used for access to other AMCs where i have no online accounts?
yes, absolutely and why not ? This is a perfect method and many people are using it that way. Its upto your convenience and comfort-ability.
Wondering why the individual AMC portal way of investing is missing in this table? 🙂 Does it mean its not best to use the individual AMC’s website to make an investment?
Making transactions through individual MF portal/sites is most easy, convenient and secure way of making the transaction.
I also wonder why the blog has not mentioned this already existing alternate way of making transaction.
Even no CAN is required.
The portals mentioned here are “Transaction Aggregators” which is a new layer in the MF eco-system. The individual AMC is a portal which offers a window to buy their own funds only. But these portals are for open for ALL AMC’s and the comparison is targeted for such portals. It is absolutely wrong to draw the conclusion that individual websites are not the best option and neither we are making that point at all !! We want to bring forward the new players of the eco system like RIA and Transaction Aggregator.
Why not we directly buy the funds by registering on their web portal?
Some of the funds are offering direct purchase, can log in to buy.
Only if they provide advices thru robo analysis, one has to think off.
It is a matter of convenience. One may feel convenient to do ALL purchases thru a single window and another may want to hop from one URL to another. None of the options is right or wrong, better or worse. it is to the individual’s taste and freedom. This post is a comparison of those players who are a single window to MF basket and that too with Direct Plans.
Dear Mr.Pattu
Can i invest through using 2 online portals with different mutual funds, just to try out , eg from invezta & oro-wealth . will there be any problem with that. kindly advise
Can you share screenshots or functionalities of goal tracking, rebalancing, etc.? Want to understand this comment better
> Invezta for the kind of goal tracking and portfolio insights it offers, comes at a pretty attractive price. The goal tracking at Unovest is a little too simple for my taste (at least for the moment).
See Direct Mutual Fund Investment/advisory Portal Invezta is now live! You can also join for free in both portals and how it works.
Post is informative. Thanks for the detailed comparison. If possible add one more feature of Referral.
In case of Invezta, if your friend joins via your referral he gets additional 25k + you get 3Y free (Option 1 plan with 79 a month). This is very powerful. I referred two of my friends and I have 6Y with me now.
You just mentioned it 🙂 I did not want to.
Dear Pattu Sir,
Your atricle is superb as usual. Very informative. My status is NRI and I tried to log in on invezta but they have not yet started services for NRI’s. Anyhow, I wanted to raise a point to you so that you can consider it one also while comparing. Invezta (or any other such site) allows to open accounts based on email id. So, if I opened one account in my wife’s name and another in my name with different email id, then it would be a problem for us. CAMS provide consolidated statements based on registered email id’s. So for a family, if investments are made through different email id’s, it won’t come in a common statement.
I have raised this point today to Invezta also. I am told by them that they would look into it.
Do you have any clues??
Regards,
Mr.Kirit Joshi , As i am also NRI and i have registered and created id with Invezta and they said they are providing services for NRI also. I have to complete my KYC 1st then ill be able to invest through them.
Regarding your query for email ids i have no clue but mr pattu may be able to give you answer & also on my query too.:)
No I dont know about this. Pl. check with them.
Hi Kirit,
Thanks for bringing this point.
This is Sharad, founder of Invezta.
We are looking at various such aspects in which we can help investors aggregate their portfolios/folios easily. Common email-id and phone number is one of them.
We shall find the best possible way to make it available and implement the same.
Regards,
Sharad
I was probably one of the first few to get started with MF Utilities. So much so that when I went to the local Karvy office to get my CAN number – they had to go through their learning with me.
Having said that, I should say my experience with MFU has been very good. Excellent response.
The only gripe that I have is that there are a few AMCs which are still not part of the consortium – most notably Mirae. So that led me to drop Mirae’s funds from my list to invest!
Some of the facilities like making a transaction across multiple fund houses in one transaction slip are a big welcome relief – especially when you have funds that are supported by CAMS, Karvy, FT, and SM.
same thing happened to me. i also dropped Mirae’s!
Dear Pattu Sir,
Your are GREAT!!!!!!.
There is no WORDS to express my gratitude for your blogs and articles. Your every blogs and articles are so relevant to Portfolio management that can’t be left unread. When I read your article, I find several links which takes me to another IMPORTANT, RELEVANT and MUST to READ article.
I have been a MF investor since 2012. Unaware of the difference between Regular and Direct Plan I have investing in MF through a broker who once only helped me in filling up the MF application. Whatever some basic knowledge on MF today I have its all due to your seamless efforts towards your financial Literacy campaign.
After knowing the importance of portfolio management for achieving various goals of life, I am in the process of taking the services of one Fee-only-SEBI registered certified financial planner. He has prepared a Comprehensive Financial Plan for me and for which I made the payment. He has not recommended any scheme or plan under that Comprehensive Financial Plan. I have understood the importance and convenience of MF investment through online transactions portals/Platforms viz: Funds India Advsor, Ifast and MF Utility. For Direct Mutual Funds my financial planner is advising to go for Ifast platform giving the reason that Ifast has a developed platform whereas MF Utility is still in the process of developing and some features like reports and feeds are yet to take shape. But on going through yours and others reviews in favour of MF Utility I am in the favour to go for MF Utility.
Sir, I shall be pleased and great full if you help me in choosing the best of theses two in the perspective of an investor.
Thank you so much
-Suresh
Any review on Arthyantra..? Or Can you give a try for this?
it seems channeling investments in Regular M.F. Schemes, not Direct Schemes.
I have a Rs 5000/- pm sip in Hdfc top 200 which I changed to direct around a year back. But when I compare the returns today, the amount is less than the amount projected had I continued in the regular scheme. Any particular reason for this?
It simply can’t be. What is your “projected amount” is not clear and not material also.
What is important is the NAV on any day. Is the NAV of direct scheme is higher than through distributor option or not. And that’s your extra gain by investing in direct schemes.
I just wanted to share my positive experience with Invezta, I am an NRI and have opened 3 separate joint accounts with three separate email ids but they have shared same email id and mobile number for all 3 accounts while opening folios, you need to raise a ticket for such a facility as it is not available online as of now, Sharad, CEO is very helpful and happy to answer queries when ever raised and they also offer facility to raise ticket online for any queries and their response time is very quick usually within 24 hours. Their fund recommendations and goal tracking etc., services offered online are very classy and worth trying, their data analytics is premium as well, over all, it is a very satisfying experience with Invezta so far and I would recommend investors who are looking for robo advisory based on goals with fund recommendations, then Invezta is best place as it offers services at a very low cost.
what way this MF Utilities platform is different than CAMS platform ? which one is better ?
Hi ! I am an NRI and I presently hold and transact through Private Wealth Management Firms. Since they are commission based Ditributors, I am always wary of their advice since I feel it may be biased.
I would like to shift to Direct Plans and have applied and received CAN with MFU. But I do require professional advice and reporting on my Portfolios. Please advise whether
1) MFU offers active Advisory Services even if for a fee
2) MFU offers Tax reports (Annual transaction Reports & Capital Gains Reports)
3) MFU offers Holdings reports on demand.
If not, then can you suggest any other suitable platform which will fulfill my requirements. Is there a platform which offers only portfolio tracking, advice and reporting if I continue to transact through MFU.
Thank you.
Please consult a fee-only financial planner from this list
In direct plans still there is some expense % what is this expense all about in direct plans ?
Is some amount of expense is paid to RIA ? If he/she sells mutual funds to his clients…from above article you said funds are tagged to RIA number.
How does RIA earns apart from subsciptions ?
Of course, there are expenses. The point is that none of them is paid to distributors or anyone else as commissions. RIAs eanr by fees from investors.
Hi Guys! Good article. Time to update the comparison,user experience, reporting, etc taking into account some of the newer direct scheme investment platforms such as Moneyfront, etc.
I am looking to switch my entire family MF investment portfolio to Direct plans…my key concern for choosing b/w MF Utility and other plaforms (Invezta & MoneyFront) is the reporting, user interface, ease of use, portfolio review, capital gain calculating, etc. On these fronts i get the impression that MF Utility is poorer. Would be glad to be corrected from your or other users experience!
Cheers!
ZM
What is the difference between MFU and myCams? I thought both are functioning in same manner. If yes then why myCams was not included in this comparison? Am I Missing something totally here being a newbie..!!!!
mycams is a registrar and transfer agents (RTAs) for a few mutual funds. MFU is a transaction aggregation portal for all type of RTAs. You can invest in direct plans in both portals.
Excellent article. But I suggest you to update the reviews on direct investment portals like Kuvera, Upwardly, goalwise also. It will help us investors a lot more in making correct decisions
Hi Freefincal,
Can you also include Kuvera, which is completely free, in your comparison?. I am just curious to compare Kuvera (free), Invezta (79 or 109) and Clearfunds (199 flat for 3 yrs per fund/scheme).
Thanks
I have to get accounts in each of them for a detailed comparison. Too much work and too boring!
MFU services are pathetic, moreover I would say no services. Toll free number is discontinued. No response for any complaint raised or any e-mails sent. I am sure everyone here having MFU, are facing the support issues. Im deeply worried that which portal will provide good support in long term. Moreover I wonder, how so many portals depend on it – MFU.
So, I am planning to switch to Invezta or equivalent, though not minding in spending 1200 p.a for better support.
I started using kuvera and I am delighted the ease of operations. I was frustrated with MFU
Firstly want to thank freefincal team for providing such an informative blog, as well as tools / screener etc. I have been your reader for past few months and today have some opportunity to contribute in terms of this topic and hence thought of sharing.
I switched over to Direct Funds in mid 2016 – yes was 3 years late in learning about Direct 🙁
Post that the first thing was to open CAN through MFU and my experience was good that time. Though I agree, off-late MFU has become damn slow when it come to queries over phone / email. They also closed their toll-free nos. Having said so they offer facilities like CaSt, CaRt etc which are quite good and also their system works well – so once CAN is allocated they are good for day to day transaction with usage of other sites for analysis / returns etc.
I have tried following portals in last few months and explored the free version / features only:
1) WealthTrust – in free model, you can only review investment via CAMS statement over their app. OK to use on the move and see how the movement is etc etc. They have option to get CAMs statement generated one click and delivered to our from wherein have to just forward and it gets updated over app. This features works quite well.
I use it on my Android phone for on the move review.
2) Piggy – in free model, you can only review investment via CAMS statement over their app. They too have feature like getting CAS over one click… For me that never worked. The app is Okay at best and not worth efforts.
I have uninstalled it !
3) BharosClub / Invetza – logged in and found they don’t offer any service for free users like me. So never logged again
4) OroWealth – in their current free model, you can go and use options (though under heading of Premium Tools) like Portfolio Health Checkup, Top Picks etc.
I have extensively used their Portfolio Health Check for last 1 year or so. Herein you can upload CAMS statements and analyse returns at many levels like XIRR, year wise returns, no. of units free of exit load, direct & regular folios, investment distribution into type of funds / sectors etc etc. These reports can be downloaded as excel. In past they had capital gain option too (if I remember correctly) which seems to be missing now.
I use their Portfolio Health Checkup regularly.
5) Kuvera – got invite from one of the founders via Quora and using it for last 1 month or so. They use Karvy CAS upload and once done you can use same folios for further investment via BSE Star backend. They are promising site as they offer free of cost invesment into direct funds. For lumpsum you can start rightaway. To invest via SIP etc you need to register Bank Mandate and can start. For STP you need to initiate via email as they set it from backend. Their email support is quite good and fast and they are receptive of ideas.
But they need to do lot of work on their data analytics like XIRR Returns year wise, Realized Capital Gains, Investment distribution analysis etc and provide options for reports export as excel. Going to give feedback detailed feedback to them over email later.
It looks very promising and am using it for my dad’s investment management. I can invite if someone wants to try 🙂
6) Unovest – have been a user for past 1 year or so and had been using only for Portfolio Analysis. Just learnt last week that it has allows transactionsand that too free of cost. It uses MFU platform and once your CAN details are verified by them can start investing. I uploaded latest CAMS CAS, mapped my Folios with CAN and did a transaction today and it was breeze. The Portfolio Analysis, the feature for which I started using Unovest, is quite good. It offers capital gain / loss, gives summary, investment distribution into type of funds / sectors etc etc. The website is slow sometimes. And also Vipin – the founder seems quite active and shares useful information / DIY stuff.
It looks very promising and along with Kuvera on my radar. Since I do most of my transactions through MFU, will be using Unovest more and more. I am sure Vipin will continue to bring enchacements.
So with this, ends my post… bit longish but wanted to share my experience. Hope readers find it useful.
Regards
Gagan P
Thank you so much! Appreciate you taking the time to write this.
Hi, if your CAN is available, suggest giving Unovest at try. It is based om MFU and so quite easy to get on-boarded if you have CAN. Read my experience below
If tou don’t find it worth, you can always move to other paid portal(s).
Hi Gagan P,
Thanks for your detailed review on different Portals. I think only in the paid version, we will get to know the robo recommendations of funds for goals. I have seen some of the funds recommended from Kuvera and Invezta.
Kuvera recommendations are predominately on Index funds.
Invezta sticks to one large cap, One Midcap and Debt fund for all the goals.
Unovest you need to pay to view the funds recommendations.Its not a robo advisory portal , But Advisory plan in Unovest ,which is quite expensive.
To me Ease of use and tracking , Kuvera looks good.
Funds Recommendations wise Invezta looks fine.
Unovest needs to improve more on Technological front like Kuvera/Invezta. Fees for advisory is quite expensive compare to free portals
Thanks Vandhi for sharing your feedback.
My aim was to share experience of using these platforms for investment into Direct Plans. After getting learning from freefincal.com and few other blogs, since last 18 months have taken MFs selection in own hands. So anyways don’t rely on these portals.
Kuvera is easy to use and interface is light but only thing is that it doesn’t have options for portfolio analysis apart from XIRR.
Unovest’s interface is also good and it is quite easy to use for investments; only condition is that one needs to have MFU CAN. I’m not sure when you explored it but for the last few week since am using it for transactions, am liking it a lot. I will suggest trying it once if you have CAN.
Yes, Unovest has high subscription charges compared to Invezta but may be because it offers human advisory and not robo like others. Anyways am a free user 🙂
I WANT TO COMPARE MFU WITH KUVERA ON TECHNOLOGICAL GROUND,ADVISORY MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE ON VALUE RESEARCH …
I am still in the process of figuring out which portal to use and had shortlisted Kuvera and Invezta.. Unfortunately the comparison above doesn’t include Kuvera.. While Kuvera has an advantage of being free for investors, Invezta standout for providing better analytics.. Not sure though whether the annual cost is worth the extra analytics they provide.. any suggestions/ideas..??