Fund houses are now selling PAN cards along with Mutual Funds to rope in investors turned off by mandatory PAN requirements.

They go together now. The PAN card and the NFO application. And fund houses are selling them together. This month, SEBI made a PAN card or application proof mandatory for Mutual Fund investments. Since then, retail investments have fallen 40 to 50%.

Fund houses like Reliance, SBI, JM Financial and others have begun to provide customers with PAN card application forms along with

Mutual Fund forms. They have also tied up with Karvy, UTI Securities and Bajaj Capital to speed up the process.  

Surajit Mishra, Senior Vice President, Bajaj Capital said, “The AMCs have taken the initiative to partner with us to facilitate many investors to come to our branches wherever they are facing a query of PAN card. We offer them the entire service of filling up the applications, providing the form 49a, the appropriate ticket which is to be filed with the form and depositing with the concerned authority for processing.”

Reliance Mutual Funds, India's largest fund house, had retail investments fall by half since July 2 when SEBI issued the ruling. It's now hiring photographers and PAN card agents. That's at no cost to the customer.

Fund houses like SBI, ICICI Prudential and HDFC have also started educating customers on the importance of the PAN card. And JM Financial, which launched JM Contra Fund on Monday is also helping customers to acquire PAN cards.

Bhanu Katoch, Head of Sales & Marketing, JM Financial AMC said, “We are tying up with intermediaries or companies which are allowed to either facilitate or allot PAN. To a great extent, for this NFO, we will even fund it because the cost of applying for PAN is Rs 73 to 74.