A lot of the young people I started working with in Indore a decade ago now live somewhere else. Pune, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Gurgaon. They still call when something breaks, and something almost always does in the months after a move. Not the investments themselves. Everything attached to them.
So here is what quietly goes wrong, in roughly the order people discover it.
The instalment stops, and nobody notices
This is first and it is the most common.
A new job means a new salary account. The SIP was attached to the old one. For a month or two the old account still has some money in it and the debits keep working. Then it runs dry, the instalments start failing, and because the value keeps moving with the market, nobody notices that nothing new is going in.
I have found SIPs that had been failing for over a year. Our post on a missed SIP payment covers what that looks like on a statement, and our post on what a job change does to your SIP covers the fix.
The redemption goes to an account you closed
The second discovery usually comes at a worse moment.
Somebody closes the old bank account a few months after moving, which is sensible. Later they redeem something, and the proceeds try to go to the account registered on the folio, which no longer exists.
The money doesn't disappear, but the request stalls while the bank details are updated and verified, and that can take a while exactly when the money was needed. Our post on changing the bank account on a folio explains the process.
The mobile number changed with the city
Less common than it used to be, and still a problem.
Some people take a new number when they move, or a work phone becomes their main one. Verification codes for any transaction go to the number registered on the folio and KYC record. If that number is gone, everything stops until it is updated.
Our page on mutual fund KYC covers why this is the single most common blocker I see.
The work email disappears
This one catches people who moved for a job and then left that job.
If a work email was registered on the folio, statements and confirmations went there. When the job ended, so did the email, and so did the only independent record arriving about the investments. People sometimes go a couple of years without seeing a statement and don't realise.
Use a personal email. It survives every employer and every city.
The address is three moves old
Less urgent than the others because very little arrives by post now, but it matters for verification and it matters if anything does need to be sent.
People who move often end up with an address on the KYC record from two or three cities ago. It rarely causes a problem on its own. It becomes a problem alongside one of the issues above, when a request needs everything to match.
Your distributor is now far away
I'll be honest about this one, since it's about me.
Most things can be done remotely now, and I help clients in other cities all the time. But some requests still need a signature or a document, and some older clients prefer to do things in person. A move puts distance into that.
You're under no obligation to stay with anybody. Changing your distributor doesn't require selling anything, as our post on changing your distributor explains. What matters is that somebody is actually looking after the details, wherever they are.
The family back home loses track
An odd one, and important.
Before the move, parents or a spouse often knew roughly what existed because the paperwork was in the house. After it, everything is on a phone in another city, and the family back home knows less than they used to.
That matters if something happens to you. Whoever would have to deal with it needs to know what exists and where, which our page on nomination and our post on what happens afterwards both cover.
The afternoon that fixes all of it
Do this within the first month after moving, before anything fails.
- Pull a consolidated statement against your PAN to see every folio you hold. Our page on the consolidated account statement explains how.
- Move every SIP to the new salary account and confirm one debit actually goes through.
- Add the new bank account to every folio before closing the old one.
- Update the mobile and email to personal ones you will keep.
- Update the address while you are there.
- Tell somebody at home what exists and where the statements go.
The SIP date may need to move too
Small, and worth doing while you are there.
A new employer may pay on a different date. If the instalment still falls on the old salary date, it may now land before the money arrives. So it fails. Every month.
Move the date to a few days after the new salary lands. Our page on types of SIP covers the other settings worth checking at the same time, including the mandate limit.
If you moved back home
Not every move is away. Some people come back to Indore after years elsewhere, and the same list applies in reverse.
An account from the other city. A number from there. A distributor or platform set up there. It is all still attached, and all of it drifts out of date once you are home.
People returning often also have folios from both periods of their life. A consolidated statement is the only way to see them in one place.
The order matters
One practical point that saves a lot of trouble.
Add the new bank account before you close the old one. Move the SIPs before the old account runs dry. Update the contact details before you lose access to the old ones. Doing it in reverse means a stretch where nothing can be verified and requests bounce between two broken records.
The one I see most often, told as a story
It goes like this. Somebody gets a good offer in another city, moves within a month, and has a hundred things to sort out, from a flat and a deposit to school admissions and a gas connection.
Investments are not on the list. Why would they be? Nothing about them seems to need attention.
Eighteen months later they call. They want to redeem something for a down payment. The request bounces. The bank account is closed. The mobile number is the old one. The email went with the last employer. Three separate fixes, each with its own verification, while the seller of the flat is waiting.
Every piece of it would have taken ten minutes in the first week after moving.
What a move does not change
Worth saying, because people sometimes assume they need to start over.
You do not need new KYC. You do not need new folios. The units you hold stay exactly where they are. Your investments are not tied to a city.
Everything on this page is about the details attached to them, not the investments. That is why an afternoon fixes it.
If you moved a while ago
It is worth checking even if you moved years ago and think everything is fine.
Look at your most recent statement. Are instalments going in every month? Is the bank account one that still exists? Does the email address still work? If any of those is uncertain, an hour now saves a great deal later.
We help clients who have moved away with exactly this, and there's no charge for checking what's out of date. Myfolios is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-145870) working from Indore since 2014.
