Data from CAS - know how much commissions you pay

[Karthik]

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

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)

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 -

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).

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

Here are more commission paid details -

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

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

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!

[VRDNation.Com]

@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

[portfolioplus911]

@Karthik

MF portfolio so why pay commissions perpetually to the agent? What role is the agent playing here?

Your comments are welcome!

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.

[Ram_Subramanian]

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

[Karthik]

@VRDNation.Com

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

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

[Karthik]

@portfolioplus911

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.

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 :)`

[Karthik]

@Ram_Subramanian

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

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

[paramita_sen]

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 ?

[SuRu007]

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.

[prabhav.agarwal]

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

[prabhav.agarwal]

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

[ZeroIndian]

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

[ichetan]

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

[Varun_Verma]

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 ???

[akashtripathi]

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.

[tallerballer]

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.

[Neelesh]

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.

[sidharth]

Your Calculation is wrong. You have calculated commission based on yearly investment but in reality commissions are paid on your valuations calculated on daily basis. For example, in Mirae, commission paid of Rs. 843/- is not calculated on yearly investments but total valuations. How can you expect a MF AMC paying commission of 8% (Sundaram)… that’s insanely wrong calculation bro. In reality, most brokers earns approx. 0.50% to 0.80% max. This also depends on which city you live in, as for Tier 2 cities commission offered are higher than T1 cities.

[akashtripathi]

@Neelesh I did contact with MFCentral on mail there was not much support, I also did Re-KYC on cams kra just to be sure that number is updated. (I haven’t changed my number and same exists since my first sip)

Also on mycams app I see many fund invested thru coin doesn’t have complete info

What can be done next from my side to ensure it is in correct everywhere.

[Neelesh]

Checking this with the RTAs, will get back shortly on this.