Data from CAS - know how much commissions you pay

Creators
1

A good friend of mine recently received a 10-page ‘Consolidated Account Statement’ (CAS), from NSDL via email. For those of you who are not familiar with CAS, check this FAQs.

My friend was not sure how to read and make sense of this report, so he asked if I could help me read through his statement and help him understand the details better. So we sat together and dug into the report.

As expected, the CAS contained all the details of the transactions he had done in the securities market over the last financial year. This included transactions across stocks, bonds, government securities, corporate bonds, and mutual funds. The report was quite straightforward to understand. Just when I was about to close it, the section under his mutual fund investment caught my attention.

Unfortunately, this friend of mine still continues to invest in Regular Mutual Funds via his agent, despite me giving him all the gyan! Anyway, that’s another story for another day :slight_smile:

The CAS report very promptly reports the commissions his agent earns by all the investments my friend makes every month, and the commissions were not small! To set the context my friend makes an investment of Rs.40,000/- every month split across 6 different mutual funds.

With his permission, I’m posting screenshots of certain sections of his CAS statements, hopefully, this should convince you why direct is a much better option than regular!

This is the intro page (should also give you a perspective of what a CAS statement is)

Image1
Image11115×793 95.7 KB

This is the snapshot of all DEMAT accounts held against your PAN and all MF folios you hold. DEMAT accounts and MF Folios are separated with single holder and joint holders. This also gives you a quick view of consolidated portfolio value -

Image%202
Image%202839×787 45.7 KB

I’ll skip some of the other sections in this report and moving directly to the MF section.

In this section, the CAS report details the funds you have invested in and the respective commissions you paid the agent (agent is identified by his name and his ARN number).

Image%203
Image%203846×673 56.5 KB

Notice, there is one direct MF, which I’ve highlighted, see the commisions paid :slight_smile:

Here are more commission paid details -

Image%204
Image%204850×558 50.7 KB

I’ve consolidated his yearly SIP investment and commissions paid information in the table below -

Image%205
Image%205805×196 6.55 KB

So this guy has essentially paid a whopping Rs.15,507/- as commission over a total yearly investment of Rs.480,000/-. This is 3.231%, which I think is quite massive.

I know the pro regular MF folks will jump at this and suggest that I should not consider the yearly investment but rather the total accumulated value in the fund. But this is exactly my problem :slight_smile:

Why should I consider the accumulated wealth? When pay commissions for the investment made in the past? MF investment is for the long term, it implies there should be no any meddling with the MF portfolio, so why pay commissions perpetually to the agent for nothing? What subsequent role is the agent playing here?

Your comments are welcome!

7 Likes
4

@Karthik,

Thanks for sharing. Very informative post !

You’re right- the only reason one would keep paying these high commissions would be out to sheer ignorance.

-Samarth

5

For certain individuals ( the high earning group ) it is a matter of convenience more than savings. As long as money keeps flowing in as salary or otherwise , people generally are less bothered in cutting corners to save few thousands.

Considering this individual is contributing 40k a month towards their savings, one can assume this person could be 24x7 busy with their work life, and cannot be bothered to go through all the formalities to make the switch to direct platform like COIN.

If I was this individual, I would not mind paying a platform like COIN a one time fee, say 5K, for a One to One Service from a Relationship Manager to help me make an easy switch to COIN.

1 Like
6

Anyway can we get this type of statement for my current Zerodha account

7

True! The only way out of this is not just educate yourself, but also help others with learn :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

This also means the guy is learned enough to make an informed decision! 15K of commission over 4.8L of investment is not really small :)`

1 Like
9

This report is issued by the Depository (CDSL or NSDL). They will mail it to your registered email id.

1 Like
10

I had a look into CAS issued from CSDL but can’t find a section on “Total Expense Ratio and Commission paid”. Called SEBI helpline they also told to contact my broker . Is there any straight forward way to track total commission paid per year against my total investment ?

11

The “Total Expense Ratio and Commission paid” section seems to be there only in March CAS Statement. I could not find it in Apr or Feb. So may be it’s an annual thing.

12

@Karthik Could you post a picture of a CAS prepared by CDSL also? It would be very helpful for comparision.

13

I think NSDL has done away with the “Total Expense Ratio and Commission paid” section in their CASes because I too can’t find them in my latest CAS

14

Like @SuRu007 said, it is there only in the March CAS, not in every month’s CAS.

15

Total Commission Paid to Mutual Fund Agents is available in March & September NSDL’s Consolidated Account Statements.

2 Likes
16

Hi @Karthik these CAS statements are for MF Investments via DEMAT mode. If I don’t invest in MF via DEMAT , will my RTA CAS statement have this commision paid section ???

17

Screenshot_2024-02-20-13-20-30-166_com.mfcentral.app
Screenshot_2024-02-20-13-20-30-166_com.mfcentral.app1080×2400 163 KB

Hi @Karthik @Neelesh , any idea why its showing this issue. All these SIP were created from Coin itself and afaik there is single number registered.

18

Honestly, SEBI would rename Regular to Commission. The instant Indians see commission in the title, they will never invest lol unless they are are actually using the MF advisor for investment advice.

Most platforms don’t even disclose regular. I have seen platforms doing string substitution in code to remove the string “Regular” from the name of the MF.

19

This could be a probable issue with MF central DB; you can write to them to get clarification on this as, from our end, we see no modification to your number has been done ever.