A client asked me last month, politely but directly, what I actually do for what I'm paid. He'd read our page on direct plans, done the arithmetic, and wanted to know what sat on the other side of it. It's the fairest question anybody can ask a distributor and I'd rather answer it properly than get defensive.
So here's the honest inventory, including the parts that aren't worth much.
What you do see, and what it's worth
The visible part is small. A form, a signature, a phone call when you want to start something, and an answer when you have a question.
None of that is hard, and I'd be uncomfortable claiming it justifies much. Anybody reasonably organised could do it themselves through a direct plan, which is why we've written honestly about direct versus regular plans rather than avoiding the subject.
If the visible part were the whole job, the honest advice to most people would be to skip us.
The chasing
Here's where most of the hours actually go, and none of it is visible to the person it's being done for.
A request gets rejected because a signature doesn't match one recorded in 2012. A bank change bounces because the name on the cheque has a middle name that the folio doesn't. A transmission needs a document the family didn't know existed. A redemption stalls because the mobile number on the folio stopped working three years ago.
None of it is complicated. It is just slow. Each of those is a sequence of calls, resubmissions and follow-ups over several days. The client experiences it as "it took a week". Our post on why you're asked for the same document twice covers the system side of it.
This is the largest single chunk of the work and the least presentable.
Noticing things nobody asked about
The second category is spotting problems the client hasn't seen, which only happens if somebody is actually looking.
An instalment that stopped four months ago when a salary account changed. A nominee that still names somebody from before a divorce. A goal two years away with the money still sitting in equity. A folio with an address from a posting the family left in 2019.
Nobody rings me about these. They do not know they exist. They surface in an annual review, and the value of catching one of them is occasionally very large and impossible to demonstrate in advance.
The conversation in a bad month
The third part is the one I'd defend hardest, and it's the least like work.
Somebody rings during a fall wanting to stop. We talk. Twenty minutes, usually. Usually they don't stop. That's the entire intervention, and it doesn't look like anything.
Our post on the regrets clients actually have puts stopping second on the list of things people wish they hadn't done. If a twenty-minute call prevents that once in fifteen years, it's worth more than everything else on this page combined, and there's no way to prove it happened.
Saying no
A quieter one, and it costs me money each time.
Telling somebody a two-year goal doesn't belong in equity, when they wanted to invest. Telling them to clear a card balance before starting, which delays the business by months. Telling them the honest answer is a deposit, which earns me nothing at all.
Our post on the times I tell somebody to stop covers those situations. It's part of the job that only exists if the person on the other side is willing to lose the transaction.
Keeping up with what changed
Less glamorous and genuinely necessary.
Categories get redefined. Tax treatment changes, sometimes twice in a few years. A scheme merges into another and clients get a letter they don't understand. Nomination rules change and suddenly folios need updating.
Somebody has to read all of that and work out which clients it affects. A household doing this alone can absolutely keep up, and in practice most don't, because it isn't their job and there's no prompt to do it.
The onboarding nobody counts
Getting a first-time investor from nothing to invested is more work than it sounds. Much more.
KYC that fails because a name has a middle initial in one place and not another. An Aadhaar-linked mobile the person stopped using. A bank mandate that needs approving before any instalment can run, which our post on registering a SIP explains. A signature that has to be redone because the first attempt drifted outside the box.
None of it is difficult. All of it takes days, several messages, and somebody willing to keep at it. For a household without much patience for forms, that is the difference between starting and giving up.
I have watched people abandon the whole idea at step two. Not because they changed their mind. Because nobody chased it.
Being the same person for fifteen years
This is the one I have come to value most, and it took years to notice.
A household that deals with the same person over a long period does not have to re-explain itself. I know which client will panic and which will not. I know whose daughter finishes school in 2029. I know which family has one person who handles everything and needs the other brought into the room.
None of that is in any file. It is the accumulated knowledge of a long relationship, and it is why the advice in year eight is better than the advice in year one.
Contrast that with a bank branch, where the relationship manager changes every couple of years and each new one starts from nothing. Our post on when your bank offers you an investment covers what that turnover costs.
What I would not claim
Being fair about the other side.
I don't pick winning schemes, and I'd distrust anybody who says they do. I don't know where markets are going. I can't get your request processed faster than the registrar processes it; I can only make sure it was correct the first time and chase it when it wasn't.
And for a genuinely organised investor who reads their statements, keeps records current and doesn't panic, a direct plan is cheaper and I'd say so. That person exists and I've told a few of them exactly that.
Who this is actually worth it for
In my experience, three kinds of household.
People who won't do the paperwork themselves, which is most people and no criticism. People who need somebody to answer a phone in a bad month. And families where somebody other than the investor will eventually have to deal with all of it, which is every family eventually.
For everybody else, the honest answer is that the visible service isn't worth much and you should do it yourself.
What I told him
Roughly the above, in shorter form. He asked one follow-up: how would he know whether he was getting the invisible part or just paying for it?
Good question. My answer was that he'd know from whether anybody had ever told him something he didn't want to hear, and whether anything had ever been caught before he noticed it. If the answer to both is no after a few years, he's paying for the visible part only, and he should either ask for more or go direct.
He's still with us. He also now asks harder questions, which I take as a reasonable outcome. Myfolios is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-145870) working from Indore since 2014.
