10 Reasons why I haven't yet considered Zerodha Coin for Mutual Fund Investments

@Bhuvan still awaiting a response on this. I can see you responded to another query on this thread, after my query, where @siva had tagged you.

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Like I’ve said multiple earlier, we’ll look at extending the cut-off down the line, can’t comment on any timelines. Post the new NAV rules even BSE’s cut-off at 2.30 PM.

Please respond officially on the ticket. 20200921976293

First of all, Zerodha is not doing a favour on investors. Zerodha has violated investors’ interest by pre-closing cut-off time wrongly since long and I am demanding it to be corrected. Zerodha on the ticket accepted that it needs to be corrected. But that doesn’t suffice.

If with new NAV BSE has 2:30 timing, sync with it then. What is stopping you.

Zerodha cannot get away by saying we will do, we will do endlessly. There has to be a time-bound solution.

Listen carefully, if you do not have a timeline in mind, I certainly have a threshold of holding patience. It’s 6 months officially since Zerodha accepted this issue needs to be corrected yet no visible action on this. After repeated follow-ups on the ticket.

Everything is getting recorded on this thread and that ticket, and until now I was trying if this can be resolved with a dialogue, if something can be resolved with love, why go for a blood-bath. But Zerodha’ apathy is forcing me, pressing my button to officially lodge a complaint at SEBI Scores, file a RTI, launch a Change.org petition and through my PR network make it a news how Zerodha is violating investors’ rightful without any resolution in sight.

By this month end if the issue is not resolved, I’d be forced to action plan B. As per SEBI rules, you are forced to resolve the issue in 30 days. If you want that way, if you want that’s how the issue has to be dealt with, fine I am all ready.

You may consult with your legal team, you have a weak case here.

P.S. This is not a threat. But only a conscious action for what is rightfully long due for investors.

Cc @nithin

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I agree with rupesh here. Its not a talk about some features that may be optional, but a fundamental requirement as a mutual fund platform.

I always see Zerodha staff as asking people to calm their horses regarding the launch of things promised by Zerodha itself, but all I can say is that in my limited experience, I have never seen a service being supported so massively by its user base. I am relatively new to this, but I am sure people can move to other services in an instant. The reason they don’t is that they trust Zerodha and are supporting them in genuine issues because they believe the issue is not intentional and think that Zerodha will give them what they want in due time.

Sure, Zerodha gets grilled a lot for miniscule downtimes and issues, but thats cause of the massive scale of the user base. Any small thing is gonna get blown out of proportions. But there is an overwhelming majority of users who support them, albeit, silently.

Some simple fundamental features, such as SWP, STP, instant liquidity upto some extent for some liquid and overnight funds are still pending for as long as I started investing in mutual funds. I could have easily gone with any other platform or direct to amcs due to starting afresh. But the only reason I still chose Zerodha as the only place I am currently investing in mutual funds is the trust I ( and numerous others) have, that we will get the features. There has to be a timeline for these to ensure the trust remains.

My two cents. First time I have written in critique. Hope someone takes note.

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This is something we are working on currently. I can’t commit if it will be ready in 30 days, but our team is working on this as of now. This isn’t a simple fix, if it was, we would have done it a long time back. We were waiting for the new Coin backend to be ready to start working on this.

Btw this also means that Coin will be able to support SIPs with whatever is the minimum as per the AMC. Essentially we will switch the coin way of doing SIP (lumpsum reinvested) to the AMC way of doing SIP if the SIP amounts are smaller.

SWP is tricky again because Coin is built on the Demat+Broker mode of powering MF transactions. As a business, this way gives us the leverage of running the Coin platform for free (very low overheads) as this is an extension of how we clear and settle stocks. But yeah the flip side are issues like this STP, and earlier cut-off (which hopefully will be fixed soon).

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The early cut off time in Coin seems to be due to Coin not utilizing the APIs of BSE Star MF/NSE MFSS for placing the MF Orders in real time. That would explain the buffer time needed for collating all Coin orders and then a bulk upload to the mutual fund platform before the mutual fund platform cutoff time.

Which one is better ? And why ? Which one has more turnover volume liquidity?

Can’t there be a workaround for atleast SWP? For example, an instruction to auto redeem. Currently, I have to keep a reminder to redeem the ultra short term fund just before the SIP date. Auto redemption combined with SIP can be a viable alternative for STP. I may be wrong due to my limited knowledge.

Also, regarding the SIP to be switched to AMC SIP, can this be optional? Cause I personally, prefer the coin WoW as it gives me the flexibility to cancel the SIP order even till the date of the SIP.

One thing that I think can be implemented with relative ease is the direct redemption in the bank account. An option to choose to do so (#3 in main post).

Btw thanks for a reply, this may be the only place where the owner of a business directly replies to someone who isn’t even putting his real name to the front. :stuck_out_tongue:

Doesn’t matter, the onus of providing liquidity falls on the fund house, not on the platform.

But why fund houses prefer bse mf more over nse mf ?

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Don’t know that. Maybe someone from Zerodha can answer.

@siva

We are doing something about this - both STP and SWP. It would have been simple to do STP if the settlement cycles were the same for all funds like stocks (T+2 days). When we offer STP, you will have an option to select funds between different AMCs and not within the same AMC as today. We will essentially be timing when the funds will get credited from a redemption order and then placing a fresh order into a fund that you have selected.

Yeah, of course. Coin SIP works only if you make that minimum starting investment in every fund. The switch to AMC SIP will be only if your starting investment is less than the minimum investment required for lumpsum.

Yep on our list too.

:slight_smile:

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All funds are listed on both BSE Star and NSE NMF, and both platforms are very similar. The activity is much higher in BSE Star because it is an older platform and BSE focused on this quite a bit in the first few years. So most platforms like us when we had to decide between BSE or NSE a few years back, chose BSE because they were trying to push this hard then.

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@Bhuvan
An update: I have lodged an official complaint on SEBI SCORES against BSE Star MF stating it is violating mutual fund investors’ rights by pre-closing the cut-off timing from 3 pm to 2:30 pm. If I don’t get a satisfactory resolution, would file an RTI at SEBI seeking how can they contradict their own guidelines and allow the discrimination with cut-off timing to happen, and parallelly file a case in the consumer court citing the discrimination.
Let’s see how things unfold from here.

P.S.
@nithin Post your response above on syncing the cut-off timing being WIP, I’m holding my patience, I have not filed a complaint against Zerodha yet.

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I am not an expert in any of this, so please consider this only as a layman’s take on this.

My assumption is that SEBI’s rules on MF cut-off timings apply only to AMCs. Read together with the circular on NAV applicability, what this means for MF purchase transactions is that if an AMC gets a purchase application together with its completed payment before the cut-off time on day T, then the MF is bound to issue units at day T’s NAV. And similarly for redemptions: if the AMC gets a redemption request complete in all respects before the cut-off time for day T, then it is supposed to process the redemption at day T’s NAV.

BSE Star MF is not an AMC, it is just a facilitator. It is not bound by SEBI’s rules on MF cut-off timings, just because (if my assumption is right) these rules are not about how facilitators should behave.

Even thinking about this from a practical point of view: BSE Star MF probably has to do a lot of work to reconcile applications with payments and so on, before forwarding everything to the AMC. This is probably why they close their cut-off half an hour before the AMCs’ cut-off: so that they can do their work properly, considering all the stuff that can go wrong in a normal day’s work.

I tried to get hold of the SEBI notification about cut-off timings to see if it applies to intermediaries as well, but could not find it. If the notification says that the cut-off applies to the time when intermediaries accept applications, then yes, there is a case against BSE Star MF. Otherwise I don’t see how BSE Star MF can be held to be at fault for wanting some time to do their job properly.

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An investor is allowed to place an order latest by 3 pm for non-liquid funds as per SEBI guidelines. On the AMC website you can place a buy order before 3 pm and if payment is successful then the same day NAV is allotted. Also, BSE Star MF is a product of BSE and it falls under the purview of SEBI guidelines.

The issue is with the 3rd party intermediatory and the way they are designed. Legacy issues with the 3rd parties. Currently, investors have to compromise by forcefully placing orders by 2:30 pm whereas window has to be kept open till 3 pm as per SEBI. This is what I am challenging.

Let me give you a simple example to articulate the problem in a better way. A movie is released in cinema theatres as well as on Netflix. While in PVR you can watch the full 3-hour movie, say, on Netflix, you can’t watch the last 30 minutes of the movie. Due to some legacy issues with the online streaming service, it allows you to watch 2:30 hours of the movie only, and ends the movie, while the last 30 minutes of the movie is still remaining. This is the analogy I have present as my argument.

Now you understand this better? As an investor, I don’t care how your UI is how you do business, whether you make money or not, how you have designed the system in the backend etc. As an investor, as an end-user of the service, I only care about if I am able to use it fully as per the rules of the game defined by SEBI. Here the answer is a big no.

I am sharing a document that I collected about the BSE MF platform. Zoom-in to read the document. If you notice, the issue is only with placing the Buy orders. If it is so, it has to be corrected. That’s my only submission. And thus I have filed a complaint with SEBI.


Moreover, in another update, SEBI has extended the deadline for declaration of NAV s by Mutual Funds to 11 pm. So Mutual Funds have time till 11 pm to announce the NAV of the day.

Since the case is with the regulatory now, I would not like to make any kind of assumptions, and instead wait for the judgement.

Fingers crossed.

I don’t see any similarity between this situation and the one about mutual funds, except that 30 minutes appears in both cases; I don’t see how this is an analogy.

Let me describe something which I think is analogous to the MF situation: A Head Post Office in a city will accept letters till 5pm, whereas a remote village post office will only accept it till 4pm. The difference is because the village post office has to arrange to collect all the post, do whatever processing it is that they have to do with it (perhaps enter in some ledger, or something), and make sure that the post reaches the nearest Head Post Office before their cut-off of 5pm, so that the latter can then send it along in that day’s postal van (if this is a thing). This is the kind of difference that I see in this case.

@ZeroIndian if the window is extended till 3 pm, uniform across all platforms and 3rd party vendors, without any discrimination, will it benefit you, me, and other mutual fund investors, yes or no? Let’s speak specifically about the protection of investor’s rights. Rest everything is secondary.

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Oh, I agree totally with that. I will be happier if they could extend the window past the market close time, so we can all take a call based on what the market did each day. But the authorities have decided that that is not a good thing, and I guess we have to live with that.

My only point is that the non-AMC players can always appeal to the fact that they need time to properly process all the applications they get each day, to justify an earlier cut-off than what the AMCs offers. And I don’t see why this is unjustified: they do need time for processing. So the reasoning goes as follows:

  • The AMCs need a cut-off time so that they can process applications and declare NAVs etc. by some reasonable time before the next day.
  • The non-AMC players need a cut-off time which is somewhat before the AMC cut-off time, so that they can do the processing on their side and submit everything to the AMCs before the latter’s cut-off time.

I don’t see why this is unreasonable.

This has been taken care of by SEBI. Till 11 pm AMCs can declare daily NAV. So they have time.

This could be an internal affair between non-AMC and AMC to find a way, but for that investors should not compromise on cut-off time. This is my whole point.