Consolidated Account Statement

Most investors hold schemes at three or four fund houses. Left alone, that is three or four separate statements arriving at different times, in different formats, none of which shows the whole portfolio.

The Consolidated Account Statement fixes it. It is one document, built by the registrars, showing all the transactions and the holdings at the end of the month across all schemes of all mutual funds for a given investor.

The thread that ties the folios together is the PAN.

Chapter 9.5 sets out the machinery, and the frequencies are the examinable part.

Where there has been a transaction. The AMC must ensure a consolidated account statement for each calendar month is issued, by post or email, per the timeline SEBI specifies, detailing all transactions and the holdings at the end of the month across all schemes of all mutual funds, to every investor in whose folio a transaction took place during that month.

Where there has not. For investors in whose folios no transaction has taken place during the preceding six-month period ending in September or March, a consolidated account statement is issued on a half-yearly basis.

How investors are identified. The AMC identifies a common investor across mutual funds by their permanent account number.

And "transaction" is defined widely: purchase, redemption, switch, dividend payout, dividend reinvestment, systematic investment plan, systematic withdrawal plan, systematic transfer plan and bonus transactions. A running SIP is therefore a monthly transaction, and keeps the CAS monthly.

Separately from the CAS, mutual funds issue a monthly Statement of Account where there has been a transaction in the month, and an annual account statement to unit-holders who have not transacted in the last six months.

The Iyers hold, all under one PAN:

Because the SIP into Fund A is a transaction every single month, a CAS is issued every month — and it carries the Fund B and Fund C holdings too, even though nothing happened in them. One statement, Rs 4,00,000 + Rs 1,50,000 + the growing flexi-cap folio, all visible together.

Now suppose the SIP is stopped in February. March, April, May, June, July and August pass with no transaction anywhere. For the six-month period ending September, there is nothing to report monthly, so the family receives a half-yearly CAS instead.

Had the ELSS folio been opened years earlier without a PAN or a valid email, it would not appear on the CAS at all — which is exactly the gap SEBI is closing with MITRA and the rules on inactive folios.

Chapter 9.5 (Account statements for investments) is a near-certain source of questions, because the three frequencies sit side by side and are easy to confuse: the monthly CAS where a transaction occurred, the half-yearly CAS for folios with no transaction in the six months ending September or March, and the annual account statement for unit-holders who have not transacted in the last six months. The other reliable question is the identifier: the CAS is built on PAN.

• The CAS spans all fund houses; the account statement does not. A Statement of Account comes from one mutual fund.
• PAN is what links the folios. A folio without a PAN simply will not appear — a live cause of unclaimed mutual fund assets.
• The half-yearly reference periods end in September and March, not at the end of any rolling six months.
• A running SIP counts as a transaction, so the CAS stays monthly even if the investor does nothing.
• Dividend payout and dividend reinvestment are transactions too, and so are bonus transactions — a folio in the IDCW option rarely goes quiet.