Budget 2016: Mr. Mutual Fund‘s letter to the finance minister

Rohit ShahDear Finance Minister,My name is Mr. Mutual Fund & I would like to join the bandwagon with my wish list for Union Budget 2016. You will agree that I am a decent product. I generate value & help my clients to get wealthy if they hold me for long term and follow basic principles. I am not only like Milkha Singh as I run faster than Inflation but I am also equally good like Pansigh Tomar as I kill taxes, too. So why not let me grow now, please?I see many investors using me to save taxes. But all of them have a much larger gap on their retirement as well as other goal savings. To encourage them to save more, can you increase your Section 80 C limit from 1.5 Lakhs to say 5 Lakhs? In fact, I suggest you to be creative here and give various tax exemptions as below. You could consider a new exemption for retirement focused mutual funds. You could incentivize long term goal based savings in mutual funds with a much higher lock in like say five years. On a separate note, did you ever think that the most efficient way to get everyone in India start their financial plan from tomorrow morning would to introduce say Section 80 (FP).. where FP means financial planning?I observe that the time to on-board my clients can run into several weeks. Can you immediately mandate eKYC in all metro locations with an SLA of maximum 2 days? I suggest you declare 1st April 2016 to accept one single KYC for the whole of BFSI. I am wondering if you have taken some cues from the banking success of Jan Dhan Yojna. Do you think your team member SEBI can come out with say Dhan Dhan Yojna? If you let me start with Aadhar rather than PAN, don’t you think we can run much faster?One thing that I certainly see is that the need to push regional languages. I am glad that my companies have Apps & website but I find myself only in English. Can you ask mutual fund companies to communicate only in the language chosen by my investors, please?While I am trying to help everyone, I notice that some of the investors stay away with me. The women like physical assets such as real estate and gold. Mr. & Mrs. Retired dislike me because in the short term I am bubbly &I keep jumping. But that’s my inherent nature. Is there a way you can help make it easier & attractive for Mr. & Mrs. Retired to invest in me? How about offering lower rate of tax on debt funds for them?And Sir, I am not sure if you observed this structural issue. Actually I like to call it as a fraud. All the salaried money is born in savings account. It loses value from Day 1 earning ~4% against inflation ~7%. While my big brother Mr. Bank is enjoying this edge for centuries, why don’t you equate the battlefield? If you ask all the companies to mandatorily give an option for the salary money to be credited to a liquid mutual fund, then let’s see who wins. What do you have to say?Coming to my investor’s retirement, I saw you giving option of diverting EPF saving to NPS in 2015 Budget. I don’t see any change on the ground. Can you throw some weight around and get this going from April 1? Also, I am so happy now that Ms. NPS is around but my investors treat her poorly as she is subjected to tax at maturity. If the PF continues to be the tax free then I wonder how many dudes would trust NPS. Many companies don’t care enough for employees. They don’t facilitate NPS. Can you make it compulsory for all companies beyond size of say 20 employees?Your team member SEBI is super active & I suspect they are ahead of time. The way they manage me is through a manufacturer’s body that is not even represented by my investors or advisors. Can you at least get the SRO going in next 45 days?I am going to continue generating value for those who stay long with me. See if you can help me. Good luck for your Budget. Yours TrulyMr. Mutual Fund.Author is a SEBI Registered Investment Advisor and has founded www.gettingyourich.com.