A common message: my father has money in a savings account, he won't use an app, and I live in another city. What can I actually do for him? Quite a lot, as it turns out, and there are a few things you genuinely cannot do no matter how much easier it would be. Knowing which is which saves a great deal of frustration.
What has to be theirs
Start with the fixed points, because everything else arranges itself around them.
The PAN has to be theirs. The bank account has to be theirs. The Aadhaar-linked mobile that receives the OTP has to be one they hold. And in a video verification, the face has to be theirs.
None of that is negotiable and none of it should be worked around. Anybody offering to complete a KYC on their behalf without them present is offering something that should be refused, however convenient it sounds. Our guide on mutual fund KYC covers the process itself.
What you can absolutely help with
Almost everything else, and this is more than people assume.
You can sit with them, physically or on a video call, and work the phone while they hold up the documents and speak. You can gather the paperwork, check the name spellings against PAN and bank records before anything is submitted, and spot the mismatch that would otherwise stall it for two weeks.
You can be the one who reads the scheme documents, who asks the questions, and who explains the answer in language that lands. And you can be the person who remembers to check the statement once a year, which almost nobody does otherwise.
What you're doing there is the work, not the deciding. The distinction matters less day to day than it does the one time somebody asks.
The offline route exists
If the video step is genuinely beyond them, and for plenty of people in their eighties it is, ask about the offline route rather than trying to fake the online one.
Physical forms, in-person verification, and paperwork submitted the old way still exist for exactly this reason. It's slower and it works, and it produces the same folio at the end.
A distributor who says the online route is the only option is telling you about their own convenience rather than about the rules. This is routine work for us, and it's a large part of why people in this position use a distributor at all rather than an app.
Whose name, which is the question that actually matters
Here's where families make an expensive mistake, usually with good intentions.
Investing your parents' money in your own name because it's simpler makes it your money. Legally, practically and if anything goes wrong. Their money should be in their name, with them as the holder, and our page on family folios in a joint household sets out why the distinction matters at exactly the moments families do not plan for.
What you can do instead is be the nominee, or be a joint holder on an either-or-survivor basis if that suits, which our page on single, joint and either-or-survivor holding explains. Both keep the money theirs while making the practical side workable.
What to actually set up
For most retired parents, three things and no more.
An accessible buffer covering several months, in the bank plus a low-risk category. Their version of an emergency is more likely and more expensive than yours, and our page on liquid funds covers where that layer sits.
A monthly income arrangement if they need one, which is a Systematic Withdrawal Plan rather than manual redemptions every few months. Our page on the SWP explains it and the SWP calculator lets you test an amount.
Nomination on everything, including the folios opened decades ago through somebody at a bank. This is the highest-value item on the list by a distance.
What we'd avoid is a complicated portfolio. Simplicity matters more here than optimisation, because somebody else may have to understand it later.
Two things worth doing while you're there
If you're already sitting with them sorting out paperwork, these take ten minutes and matter more than the investment itself.
Write down what exists. Not amounts if they'd rather not, but a list: which fund houses, which bank, which email the statements come to. Keep a copy. Families lose money not because it was invested badly but because nobody knew it was there, and our guide on what happens afterwards covers why that matters.
Check the mobile number on everything. Old numbers on old folios are the single most common reason an update stalls, and fixing it while you're in the room is far easier than doing it by phone from another city three months later.
The conversation that's harder than the paperwork
Worth naming, since it's the actual obstacle in most families.
Parents who saved carefully for forty years in deposits often hear a suggestion to invest as a criticism of how they did things. It usually isn't meant that way and it frequently lands that way.
What works better is starting from what they already decided well. The buffer stays where it is. The deposits they rely on stay where they are. The only question is where new savings or a maturing deposit goes, which is a much smaller conversation than the one that starts with moving everything.
And if the honest answer is that their money should stay in deposits, that's a legitimate outcome. Our page comparing mutual funds and fixed deposits sets out where each genuinely belongs.
Distance, and what it changes
If you live in another city, which is the usual situation, two things are worth arranging deliberately.
First, make sure the statements go to an email they can access, not only to yours. It's tempting to route everything through you because you're the one who reads it, and it quietly makes them dependent on you for information about their own money. Both of you on the record is fine; only you on it is not.
Second, agree who they call. If it's you, you need to be reachable on a working day, which is not always realistic. Having a distributor they can ring directly, in their own language, solves a problem that otherwise surfaces at the worst time, and it's a good part of why families in this position use one.
The other thing distance changes is the review. Put a date in your own calendar once a year, because nobody else will, and our guide on reading a mutual fund statement covers what to look at.
Before you start
- Check whether they already have KYC, since many people who invested once decades ago do.
- Confirm the Aadhaar-linked mobile is a number they actually hold, as this stalls more attempts than anything else.
- Check name spellings match across PAN, Aadhaar and bank records.
- Pull a consolidated statement against their PAN in case old folios exist, which our guide on finding old investments explains.
If you'd like somebody to handle this with them, including the offline route and the folios nobody remembers, that's routine work here and there's no charge for sorting out what exists. Myfolios is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-145870) working since 2014. Get in touch.
