Here is how this goes wrong, almost word for word. Somebody needs money for a hospital bill on a Tuesday. They submit a redemption. It fails, because the bank account on the folio was the salary account from a job they left in 2019. Now they have to update the bank details first, which needs a verification that goes to a mobile number they also stopped using. What should have taken two days takes two weeks, in the week they could least afford it.
None of it was a mistake anybody made. It was a form nobody filled in when nothing was urgent.
Do these in the right order
This is the part people get backwards, and it causes most of the frustration.
Mobile number and email first. Every other update is verified through them, so if they're out of date, nothing else will go through. Fix these before you attempt anything else, however keen you are to get to the bank account.
Bank account second. This is the one that actually blocks your money, and it needs the contact details working before it can be verified.
Address and other KYC details third. Worth doing, rarely urgent, and easier once the first two are sorted.
People start with the bank account because that's the one they noticed, hit a verification they can't receive, and give up. Start at the top of the list instead.
Changing the bank account
The routes are the same as for most folio changes: the fund house's own portal or app, the registrar's portal covering the fund houses it services, or through your distributor.
What you'll generally need is proof that the new account is yours. A cancelled cheque with your name printed on it, or a bank statement or passbook page showing name, account number and IFSC. If the cheque doesn't carry your printed name, ask the branch for a letter, because a plain cancelled cheque is the most common reason these requests come back.
Two things worth knowing. Fund houses often allow more than one registered bank account, with one marked as default for payouts, which is genuinely useful if you're mid-transition between banks. And there's usually a cooling period after a bank change before a redemption is paid to the new account, which exists for fraud prevention and is exactly why you don't want to be doing this in an emergency.
Changing the mobile number and email
Since KYC became centralised, this is often handled at the KYC level through the KYC registration agency rather than folio by folio, which is a considerable improvement over how it used to be.
The process typically needs your PAN, the new details, and verification, and where the old contact is completely inaccessible there's usually an offline route requiring identification and a signed request. Annoying, and it only happens once.
One thing to check while you're in there. If a distributor's email or mobile is sitting on your folio instead of yours, change it. Not because anything improper is necessarily happening, but because you should receive your own statements directly from the registrar. Always. Including from us.
The name mismatch nobody warns you about
This is the update that takes the longest and it starts the same way every time: the folio says one thing, the PAN says another, and the bank account says a third.
Usually it's harmless in origin. An initial expanded on one document and abbreviated on another. A surname changed after marriage on the Aadhaar but not on the folio. A father's name recorded differently across two applications made a decade apart.
Nothing breaks while you're only investing. It breaks when you redeem, or when a family member claims, because at that point the records have to agree. The fix generally involves supporting documentation and sometimes an affidavit, and it is far easier to do calmly than as part of a claim.
So while you have the statement open, read the name on each folio character by character. It's a two-minute check that removes a fortnight of delay later.
The situations that make this urgent
Four, and all of them are foreseeable.
- You changed jobs and the old salary account is dormant or closed. Very common, and the number-one cause of failed redemptions.
- Your bank merged or your branch shut. The IFSC may have changed even though the account number looks the same.
- You changed your phone number and didn't think about which financial records pointed at it.
- Marriage or a name change, where the folio, PAN and bank account no longer say the same thing. This one takes the longest, so start early.
If any of these has happened in the last few years, check your folios this week rather than waiting for a reason.
Find out what needs fixing in one go
Rather than working folio by folio from memory, pull a consolidated account statement. It lists your holdings across fund houses against your PAN, shows where the statements are currently going, and usually surfaces at least one folio people had forgotten about entirely.
Our guide on finding old mutual fund investments walks through how to request it. Do that first, make a list, then work down it in the order above.
And while you have the list open, check nomination on every folio at the same time. It's the same sitting and it's the item with the highest consequence, as our guide on adding or changing a nominee explains.
Keep one thing in mind about who submits it
These requests can be submitted by you directly, or through a distributor acting on your behalf. Both are normal.
What should never happen is somebody else's contact details ending up on your folio as part of the process, or a request being submitted with details you haven't seen. Ask for a copy of what was submitted, and check the confirmation that arrives from the registrar rather than taking anyone's word that it went through, ours included.
The confirmation matters more than the submission. A request that came back for a missing document, and that nobody followed up, looks exactly like a completed one until the day you need it to have worked.
How long each of these takes
Rough expectations, so you can plan rather than guess.
- Contact details: usually the quickest, often the same day if the existing mobile still works and you can receive the verification.
- Bank account: a few working days once submitted correctly, plus the cooling period before a redemption is paid to the new account.
- Address and other KYC: a few working days, and it flows through to the folios it applies to rather than needing separate requests.
- Name correction: the longest, because it depends on the documentation you can produce. Start this one first if it applies to you.
None of these is quick enough to do in a crisis, which is the entire argument for doing them now.
Do it on a Tuesday when nothing is wrong
That's really the whole point of this article. None of these updates is difficult. All of them are difficult under time pressure, and time pressure is exactly when people discover they're needed.
An hour with your statement open, when nothing is urgent, covers a lifetime of investing. If you'd rather somebody did it with you, we handle this for clients routinely, including for folios that weren't invested through us. Myfolios is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-145870) working since 2014. Get in touch, and if you're sorting this out for retired parents, our page on planning for senior citizens covers what usually needs attention.
