I am receiving statements and documents related to mutual funds from different entities apart from Fincare services. What are these companies? Is Fincare services sharing my investment details with outside entities?

Fincare services does not share investors’ investment details with any entity other than the ones legally recognized by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for transaction fulfillment purposes. Typically, these entities include the mutual fund companies themselves, and their back office service providers (also known as Registrar and Transfer agents, or R&T, for short). Recently, SEBI has ruled that mutual fund companies and R&Ts also need to share these details with depositories (regulated entities such as CDSL and NSDL). As an investor protection initiative, SEBI has required both these service providers – R&Ts, as well as depositories – to send statements (consolidated or partial) to investors directly from time-to-time. These serve to inform investors about transactions involving their investments, so that investors can ensure that all is in order. Essentially, this is a system of checks and balances – the distributor (such as Fincare services) executes transactions on behalf of the customer, and a different (regulated) entity confirms the same directly to him, assuaging him that it happened correctly. Such a system, well-intended as it is, might result in the investor getting duplicate notifications (email, SMS, direct mails) about the same transactions and holdings. Hopefully, over time, this duplication will reduce, and investors will be able to opt out of communications that they do not want to receive.