Review investment portfolio regularly, advises Roongta

Harsh Roongta, CEO, apnapaisa.com advises investors to review their investment portfolio from time to time with professional help. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Roongta said it is very important for investors to look into this aspect as funds may lose value and something that looks good at a certain point of time may not be so good at another time. Hence, investors need to be cautious.

Overall, investment in a balanced fund can secure the investor's prospects, explained Roongta adding that it is also necessary to have a health and life insurance before setting out on an investment agenda.

Here is the edited transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.

Q: Can invest Rs 15,000 per month. How do I allocate the money?

A: I think the funds that you already have, all of them are pretty good. We can just ask you to look at them. I think you have UTI, ULIP scheme which is a debt oriented fund. Depending on the amount of debt, you might want to have a relook at that. Other than that, I think you have a good fund portfolio.

Since your goal is only five years from now and you already have a reasonably decent equity exposure, I would advise further exposure in a balanced fund. Rs 15,000 in a balanced fund assuming a return of around 12.9% will give you roughly Rs 13 lakh in five years. That coupled with whatever return you get on your existing funds should broadly bring you within striking distance of your goal.

On the balanced funds, you can choose between HDFC Prudence , Reliance Regular Saving Balanced or you can divide up the amount between the two. But, balanced fund is what I would recommend. If you don't review your portfolio from time-to-time with professional help, it may not give you returns. I think one extremely important thing is the funds that are good today may not remain good tomorrow. So you need professional help to keep on reviewing.

If that is not something that you are doing then maybe you should look at and especially if largecap is what you want to invest in, investing in an index fund, a Nifty index fund like a Franklin India Index Fund Nifty is also a good idea. That at least takes away the fund manager bias and you clearly need to review your insurance.

I suspect you are underinsured both for life as well as for health. That is something you should not ignore. I think insurance comes first, investment comes later.