A new digital platform “MITRA” has been launched by SEBI to assist investors in tracking and reclaiming inactive or unclaimed mutual fund folios.

• Unit Holder Protection Committee (UHPC): Sebi has also revised the mandate of the Unit Holder Protection Committee (UHPC) under Mutual Funds rules. 
  • They will now be responsible for reviewing inactive folios along with unclaimed dividends and redemptions, ensuring proactive steps are taken to reduce such cases.

About Mutual Fund Investment Tracing and Retrieval Assistant:

• It is a digital platform developed by the RTAs (Registrar and Transfer agent) to provide investors with a searchable database of inactive and unclaimed mutual fund folios at an industry-level 
  • RTAs: They are private firms that are registered with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) to keep track of investors’ transactions in mutual funds.
• Objective: It is to encourage investors to search for forgotten Mutual Fund investments and update KYC as per the current norm.
• Host: The MITRA platform  will  be  hosted  jointly  by  the  two Qualified  RTAs  (QRTAs) ie. Computer Age Management Services Limited (CAMS) and KFIN Technologies Limited as  agents  of  AMCs
• Function: 
  • To enable investors to identify the overlooked investments or any investments made by any other person for which he/she may be rightful legal claimant
  • To encourage investors to do KYC as per the current norms thus reducing the number of non-KYC compliant folios
  • It will lead to reduction in the unclaimed Mutual Fund folios
  • To contribute towards building a transparent financial ecosystem and a reliable medium   for   investors   to   find   their inactive and unclaimed Mutual Fund investments
  • To build and incorporate mitigants against fraud risk

About Inactive Folio

• A folio is classified as inactive when there is an absence of investor-initiated transactions, financial or non-financial, for a period of ten years, despite having a unit balance.