If you have invested in Mutual Funds, you might have heard about CAMS. Want to know what exactly it does? Here’s all the info.
Invested in Mutual Funds or planning to invest soon? Then you must have heard of CAMS. Don’t know much about it? CAMS or Computer Age Management Services is India’s most preferred Mutual Fund transfer agency.
Now, what’s a transfer agency? This is an organisation used by Mutual Fund companies and other financial institutions to record transactions and maintain these records. Essentially, transfer agents in the Mutual Fund industry will help maintain records of buying and selling of securities within funds. Some transfer agents also calculate and disburse dividends and help prepare and mail shareholder account statements.
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According to the data on the CAMS website, this company serves over 60% of assets in the Mutual Fund industry and provides services to more than 15 Mutual Fund houses.
The Regulator
CAMS is a Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulated entity. CAMS is co-owned by NSE Strategic Investment Corporation Limited (NSESIC), a subsidiary of National Stock Exchange, HDFC Group and Acsys Investments Pvt. Ltd.
The Services
Services provided by CAMS include:
Transfer Agency Services
CAMS helps process transactions of active Mutual Funds. For recording these transactions and maintaining them, CAMS puts its system to a stress test at high volumes and ensures that the system’s security is tested by Big Five accounting firms.
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Distributor Services
Mutual Fund distribution is big business in India and the transaction processing environment is complex. There are many sub-agents of distributors in the country leading with a retail investor base and they will need information regarding Mutual Fund transactions. So, CAMS offers Distributor Services packages to all distributors who operate using retail sub-agents.
The services include –
- Maintenance of sub-brokers’ details
- Maintenance of investor details
- Import of investors’ daily transaction details
- Import of month-end net asset positions
- Import of month-end trailer fees payable
- Computation of incentives payable to sub-brokers for sales
- Computation of commission payable to financial consultants for sales
- Front-end commissions payable to sub-brokers
- Trailer fees payable to sub-brokers
- Target-based incentive commissions payable to sub-brokers
- System to view investors’ portfolio under one client number
Other Services
Apart from serving Mutual Fund houses and distributors, CAMS also provides technology-based service solutions to Life Insurance companies, Private Equity Funds, banks and Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFC). CAMS is also an approved GST Suvidha Provider (GSP).
What’s CAMS’ USP?
CAMS has built a highly reliable IT system that can support more than 11 million transactions a month. It also provides seamless information using real-time connectivity with a geographical spread covering clients’ offices, customer service centers and back offices across India. CAMS provides a distributed computing environment which can be shared by customers, entities and different verticals.
Since CAMS acts as a custodian of customers’ data, it takes special care to maintain complete confidentiality of the data. CAMS uses data that it maintains for the sole purpose of servicing customers and ensures that there is no conflict of business interest.
CAMS employs over 5,000 people and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services field. CAMS has its own college which is used to administer knowledge-management programs and also helps hire and train people.
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CAMS is committed to quality and is an ISO 9001:2008 certified company. It has defined processes that are followed diligently. It has managed 6 sigma levels of quality with the task of setting up 5 million new accounts a year and processing close to 8 million transactions a month.
With offices spread across 260+ locations and continuous branch expansion plans, CAMS is able to serve all it customers across India. If a location doesn’t have a CAMS transaction point, FinNet helps. FinNet is a web-based electronic order routing and settlement platform. This system steps in to route orders and finishes the processing on the same day.
So, the next time, you want to redeem your Mutual Funds, you can approach CAMS if your Mutual Fund house doesn’t help. This is if your Mutual Fund house is serviced by CAMS. Yet to invest in Mutual Funds? Start right away!
Disclaimer: The content in this post is based on information from the CAMS website.