Meet MITRA: SEBI's platform to track inactive mutual fund folios
What's the story
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has launched a new platform called Mutual Fund Investment Tracing and Retrieval Assistant (MITRA).
The initiative aims to help investors trace their inactive mutual fund folios.
Inactive folios are those with no investor-initiated transactions, financial or non-financial, for a decade but still carry balance.
The MITRA platform will be operated by CAMS and KFIN Technologies as agents of asset management companies (AMCs).
Implementation timeline
It will be operational within 15 working days
SEBI has asked the two Qualified RTAs (QRTAs), CAMS and KFIN Technologies, to make the MITRA platform operational within 15 working days from today.
The platform will help investors identify overlooked investments or investments made by others for which they may be legal claimants.
This is part of SEBI's broader strategy to encourage investors to complete their Know Your Customer (KYC) process and reduce non-KYC compliant folios.
Addressing challenges
Why is MITRA necessary?
SEBI's circular emphasized that over the years, mutual fund investors tend to lose track of their investments, particularly those made in physical form with minimal KYC details.
Mutual fund schemes with open-ended growth options may stay invested indefinitely until an investor or their nominee/legal heir approaches the concerned AMC for redemption/transfer/transmission.
The MITRA platform is expected to solve these issues and reduce unclaimed folios.
Platform accessibility
MITRA to be hosted on various websites
The MITRA platform will be jointly hosted by CAMS and KFIN Technologies, and will be available via a link on the website of MF Central, AMFI, AMCs, the two QRTAs and SEBI.
The QRTAs will be jointly responsible for compliance with all applicable regulations, including system audit and cyber security audit.
They also have to ensure the platform complies with SEBI's guidelines for Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) specified for market infrastructure institutions (MIIs).