# About Name: Corpus Description: You can add a great description here to make the blog readers visit your landing page. URL: https://blog.corpus.finance # Navigation Menu - Home: https://corpus.superblog.click/ - Sample Page: https://corpus.superblog.click/sample-page - Search: https://corpus.superblog.click/search - Corpus: https://corpus.finance/ # Blog Posts ## What you pay for advice at ₹25 lakh, ₹50 lakh and ₹1 crore: distributor, app, flat fee, percentage fee, PMS Author: Saksham Mittal Author URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/author/saksham-mittal Published: 2026-10-21 Meta Title: What you pay for advice at ₹25 lakh, ₹50 lakh and ₹1 crore: distributor, app, flat fee, percentage fee, PMS Meta Description: Five ways to pay for help with a mutual fund portfolio in India, what each costs in rupees at three portfolio sizes, what SEBI requires each one to do for you, and why the answer to "adviser or app" changes with the size of the number. URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/cost-of-investment-advice-india-by-portfolio-size "I have 50 lakh in mutual funds. Do I need an adviser or is an app enough?" The question comes up constantly, and the usual answers are either "you can do it yourself" or "it depends". Both are true and neither helps. The useful version of the question is arithmetic. There are five ways to pay for help with a portfolio in India, and each one costs a different amount at ₹25 lakh, ₹50 lakh and ₹1 crore. Each one is also required by SEBI to do a different amount for you. Once both are on one page, the choice is smaller than it looks. This guide lays it out. It does not tell you which to pick; that depends on you, and personal advice is what the second and third rows of the table are registered to give. Corpus is in the process of SEBI registration and, unless and until that is granted, this site is education only. ## The five ways to pay **1\. Commission, through a regular plan.** You pay nothing directly. The fund house pays your distributor a trail commission every year out of the regular plan's expense ratio, so the plan's NAV grows more slowly than the direct plan of the same scheme. One large broker's disclosure for the July to September 2026 quarter shows equity trail rates from fund houses ranging from 0.50% to 1.95% a year. Fund-house rate cards for the same quarter show base trail on diversified equity funds from about 0.85% to 1.6% a year before GST, with some fund houses stepping the rate down after the third year and others paying a flat rate. In June 2026, Outlook Money's reading of AMFI data put the average gap between regular and direct expense ratios across 43 flexi cap schemes at 1.14 percentage points in March 2026, narrowing to 1.12 by May after SEBI's new expense rules took effect. **2\. A SEBI registered investment adviser, flat fee.** SEBI allows two fee modes. The fixed mode is capped at ₹1,51,000 a year per family of clients, revised every three years. In practice, freefincal's list of flat-fee planners (updated August 2026) shows first-year fees from ₹11,000 to ₹1,25,000, with renewals typically at half. Published prices on individual RIA sites this month run from ₹13,000 to ₹15,000 a year at the low end, through ₹25,000 to ₹30,000 plus GST for a first plan, to ₹50,000 plus GST, and ₹1,50,000 at one hourly-fee practice that takes only families above a stated net worth. **3\. A SEBI registered investment adviser, percentage fee.** The other mode: a percentage of assets under advice, capped at 2.5% a year per family. Published schedules are far below the cap. One advisory firm charges 0.75% a year on portfolios from ₹50 lakh to under ₹2 crore, stepping down to 0.50% at ₹10 crore and above; a direct-plan platform's advisory tier charges from 0.8% plus GST on portfolios above ₹50 lakh, with a minimum fee. An adviser may switch a client between the two modes with consent, and may collect at most one year's fee in advance. **4\. A subscription app.** A flat annual charge for research, portfolio analysis or model portfolios. Published prices in 2026 sit between roughly ₹1,000 and ₹5,000 a year, some quoted before GST and some inclusive, and some billed monthly or quarterly. Whether the app may tell you what to do with your money depends on its registration, not its price (see below). **5\. Portfolio management services.** A manager runs a separate portfolio in your name. The regulatory minimum is ₹50 lakh. Fixed fees in the industry run from about 1% to 2.5% a year, often with a performance fee above a hurdle, and some charge an exit load in the first year. From 1 April 2027, SEBI's new PMS regulations add a mutual-fund-only route with a ₹25 lakh minimum and the fixed management fee capped at 1% of assets. And the sixth way, which is not a way to pay: a direct-plan platform with no advice. SEBI's [execution-only platform framework](https://blog.corpus.finance/who-can-legally-give-investment-advice-india/) (2023) covers apps that let you transact in direct plans for no commission. Such a platform is an agent of the fund house or of you, and SEBI's circular says its tools may not provide research, opinions or advisory activity. You get execution and data. The thinking is yours. ## What each one costs at three sizes Annual cost, before GST where the fee is a fee, using the mid-range figures above. Treat every number as illustrative. ₹25 lakh₹50 lakh₹1 croreRegular plan, 1.0 percentage point gap over direct₹25,000₹50,000₹1,00,000Regular plan, 0.5 pp gap (large, older funds)₹12,500₹25,000₹50,000Flat-fee RIA, ₹25,000 first year₹25,000 (1.0%)₹25,000 (0.5%)₹25,000 (0.25%)Flat-fee RIA, renewal at half₹12,500₹12,500₹12,500Percentage-fee RIA at 0.75%₹18,750₹37,500₹75,000Subscription app, ₹3,000 a year₹3,000 (0.12%)₹3,000 (0.06%)₹3,000 (0.03%)PMS, 1.5% fixed (₹50 lakh minimum)not available₹75,000 plus any performance fee₹1,50,000 plus any performance feePRIM from April 2027, 1% cap (₹25 lakh minimum)up to ₹25,000up to ₹50,000up to ₹1,00,000 So, three things the table makes visible. The commission you are already paying may be the largest line. A ₹50 lakh portfolio held entirely in regular plans, at the March 2026 average gap of 1.14 points, is paying about ₹57,000 a year for distribution. That recurs every year as part of the plan's expense ratio. Your half-yearly CAS for September and March shows the actual rupee commission paid on your holdings, so you do not have to estimate it. Flat fees get cheaper as the portfolio grows; percentage fees do not. At ₹25 lakh a ₹25,000 plan is 1% of assets, which is in the same range as a regular plan. At ₹1 crore the same plan is 0.25%, and the 0.75% adviser is now ₹75,000 a year. This is why the "adviser or app" question has a different answer at different sizes: the cost of a human plan falls in percentage terms while the cost of commission and percentage advice stays flat or rises. And the cheapest line is not comparable to the others. A subscription app at ₹3,000 and a planner at ₹25,000 are not two prices for the same thing. The next section is what each is required to do. ## What SEBI requires each one to do for you What it may tell youWhat it must doWho pays itCheck it onSEBI registered investment adviser (INA number)Personal advice: what to buy, sell, hold, switchRisk profile you; assess suitability; record the advice and its rationale, signed and dated, for five years; act as a fiduciary; yearly audit; take money only from you, nothing from product makersYouSEBI's Recognised Intermediaries listMutual fund distributor (ARN)Advice incidental to the schemes it distributesAMFI code of conduct; disclose commission (it appears in your half-yearly CAS)The fund house, out of the regular plan's expensesAMFI's ARN searchExecution-only platformNothing by way of advice; execution and dataOperate as an agent of the AMC (Category 1) or of you (Category 2)Nobody, or the fund houseAMFI (Category 1) or the exchange (Category 2)Subscription app or research serviceDepends on its registration. If it is an RIA, personal advice. If it is a research analyst (INH), research, not personal advice. If neither, education and toolsThe duties of whichever registration it holdsYou, by subscriptionThe INA or INH number on its site, matched to SEBI's listPortfolio manager (INP)Runs the portfolio for you under an agreementPMS regulations: minimum ticket, fee disclosure, reportingYou, as a percentage of assets and sometimes of profitsSEBI's list of portfolio managers The first row is the one where SEBI's regulations require a documented risk profile, a suitability assessment, a written rationale and a yearly audit. SEBI's own count, in a speech by its chairman in March 2026, was about 1,000 registered investment advisers in the country, 470 of them individuals, and the number has fallen since 2021. An individual adviser who crosses 300 clients, or ₹3 crore of fees in a year, has to convert to a non-individual registration. That is the supply side of the "do I need an adviser" question, and it is small. The fourth row is where most confusion lives. An app that charges ₹2,000 a year and shows you a model portfolio may be an RIA, in which case it is bound by everything in row one, or it may be registered as a research analyst, or as nothing. The price tells you nothing. The registration number on the site does. ## So which one, at which size This is a description of what the numbers tend to show, not a recommendation. At ₹25 lakh, the first question is usually not "which adviser" but "what am I paying now". If the portfolio is in regular plans, the half-yearly CAS will show a commission figure in the low tens of thousands a year. A one-time flat-fee plan is in the same range. Whether it is worth paying depends on whether you have questions a plan would answer; if your questions are "what do I own and what does it cost", the answers are in your own statements and the guides on this site cover how to read them. At ₹50 lakh, every option is affordable and the costs start to separate. Commission at the March 2026 average gap is about ₹57,000 a year. A percentage-fee adviser is about ₹37,500. A flat-fee plan is ₹25,000 falling to ₹12,500. The subscription app is ₹3,000. Personal advice on what to change is, under SEBI's regulations, the role of a registered investment adviser; a distributor's advice is limited to being incidental to the products it distributes, and an app without a registration is giving you data and education. At ₹1 crore, the percentage lines start to matter more than the flat ones. A 0.75% adviser costs three times a flat-fee plan every year; a 1.5% PMS costs six times. Fees that scale with assets are a separate question to put directly to the adviser, with the SEBI fee caps and the required written rationale in mind. In every column, the fee is one input. The others are whether the person is permitted to advise you, what they are required to document, who else is paying them, and what you can check on a register. Those are on the second table, and all of them can be checked in a few minutes on SEBI's and AMFI's websites. ## Frequently asked questions **Do I need a financial adviser for a 50 lakh portfolio?** There is no rule that you do. What changes with size is cost: at ₹50 lakh the commission on regular plans is about ₹57,000 a year at the March 2026 average gap, a flat-fee plan is typically ₹13,000 to ₹50,000, and a percentage-fee adviser at 0.75% costs about ₹37,500. Personal advice on what to change is the role SEBI's regulations assign to a registered investment adviser. **What is the maximum fee a SEBI registered investment adviser can charge?** Either 2.5% of assets under advice a year per family, or a fixed fee of up to ₹1,51,000 a year per family, excluding GST. The fixed cap is revised every three years. **How much do fee-only financial planners charge in India?** Published first-year fees run from about ₹11,000 to ₹1,25,000 on freefincal's list, with the individual fee pages we read in October 2026 sitting between ₹13,000 and ₹50,000, and renewals usually at around half. **Is a subscription investing app allowed to tell me which funds to buy?** Only if it is registered with SEBI as an investment adviser (INA number) and has assessed your suitability. A research analyst registration (INH) permits research, not personal advice. An execution-only platform may not advise at all. **What is the minimum investment for PMS in India?** ₹50 lakh under the current regulations. From 1 April 2027, a mutual-fund-only PMS route (PRIM) opens at ₹25 lakh with the fixed fee capped at 1% of assets. * * * _Sources: SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013, consolidated to November 2025 (regulations 13, 15, 15A, 16, 17, 19, 22); SEBI Master Circular for Investment Advisers, 6 February 2026 (fee modes and caps, mode switching, advance fees); SEBI circular of 2 April 2025 on advance fees; SEBI chairman's address, 16 March 2026; SEBI Recognised Intermediaries list, October 2026; SEBI circular of 13 June 2023 on execution-only platforms; SEBI circular of 20 September 2016 on commission disclosure in the half-yearly CAS; SEBI (Portfolio Managers) Regulations, 2026, effective 1 April 2027, and SEBI press release of 24 September 2026 (PRIM); ICICI Direct commission disclosure, July to September 2026; Invesco, Old Bridge and The Wealth Company distributor rate cards, July to September 2026; Outlook Money, 9 June 2026, on regular versus direct TER gaps from AMFI data; freefincal, list of flat-fee-only financial planners, August 2026; published fee pages of Insightful, Vivektaru, Sahaj Money, PLNR, Fiduciaries.in, Finnovate and Scripbox, read 21 October 2026; PowerUp Money and Value Research pricing pages; Dezerv and Business Today pages on PMS fee structures. All rupee figures in the tables are illustrative calculations from these published rates. Corpus is in the process of registering as an investment adviser with SEBI. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Investment in securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing._ --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## Mutual fund overlap: how to check it across your whole portfolio, and what the number means Author: Saksham Mittal Author URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/author/saksham-mittal Published: 2026-10-21 Meta Title: Mutual fund overlap: how to check it across your whole portfolio, and what the number means Meta Description: Overlap calculators compare two funds at a time. The question that matters is how much of your entire portfolio sits in the same twenty stocks. This guide shows SEBI's own overlap formula, where to get the holdings data, how to run the check across every fund you own, and why three large cap funds will always overlap heavily. URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/mutual-fund-portfolio-overlap-check Most overlap tools ask you to pick two funds and give you a percentage. That is a start. It is also the wrong unit. You do not hold two funds; you hold six or eleven or seventeen, and the number that affects you is how much of all that money is riding on the same handful of companies. This guide explains how overlap is measured (SEBI now publishes the formula), where the holdings data comes from, how to extend the check to your whole portfolio in a spreadsheet, and how to read the result. It describes the arithmetic of the choices people then face. It does not tell you what to buy, sell or switch. Corpus is in the process of SEBI registration and, until that is granted, this site is education only. ## The formula Before February 2026 there was no official formula. Most calculators used the minimum-weight method, and SEBI has now written the same method into its scheme categorisation circular, because fund houses have to measure overlap between their own schemes. For each stock held by both funds, take the smaller of the two weights. Add those up. That sum is the overlap. StockFund A weightFund B weightCounts asStock 19.0%7.5%7.5%Stock 28.0%8.5%8.0%Stock 36.0%3.0%3.0%Stock 44.0%0%0%Stock 52.5%5.0%2.5%Overlap21.0% (Illustrative weights, not any actual scheme.) A weight is the stock's market value divided by the scheme's total assets, matched at ISIN level. SEBI's version uses total assets as the denominator, so cash and debt holdings dilute every weight; some tools use equity holdings only, which is one reason two calculators can disagree by a few points on the same pair. Some tools report something else: the number of stocks the two funds have in common divided by the number of distinct stocks across both. That is a count, not an exposure. Two funds can share 40 of 60 names and still overlap only 25% by weight if the big positions differ. Check which one a tool is giving you before you compare results. ## Where the holdings come from Every fund house has to publish each scheme's full portfolio, with ISINs, as on the last day of the month, within 10 calendar days of month end, on its own website and on AMFI's, as a downloadable spreadsheet. Debt schemes publish fortnightly. If your email is registered, the fund house also sends you a link to the portfolios of the schemes you hold. So the raw material is public and never more than about six weeks old. An overlap tool is a convenience layer on top of these spreadsheets. If you can use a spreadsheet, you can do the whole-portfolio version yourself, which a two-fund calculator is not built to do. New from 2026: fund houses also have to publish, every month, the overlap between their own schemes category by category. That page on an AMC's website is worth a look before you add a second fund from the same house. ## Running it across your whole portfolio Six steps. Half an hour the first time, ten minutes after that. 1. From your CAS, list each scheme you hold and its current value. (The guide on reading your CAS covers where to find this.) 2. Download the latest monthly portfolio spreadsheet for each scheme from the fund house's site. 3. In one sheet, for each scheme, multiply each stock's weight by the rupees you hold in that scheme. That gives your rupee exposure to each stock through that fund. 4. Add up by ISIN across all schemes. Sort descending. 5. Divide each total by your overall equity value. That column is your real portfolio, the one the fund names do not show. 6. For sectors, do the same with the sector column the spreadsheet provides. Two things fall out of this that no pairwise number shows. First, your top ten stocks as a share of everything. Second, which single stock you are most exposed to, and through how many funds. A portfolio of several large cap funds can end up with a single private bank at 8 to 10% of the total, spread across five "different" funds. You can also build the pairwise matrix from the same sheet (apply the formula above to each pair), but once you have the consolidated view, the pairwise percentages matter less. ## Why large cap funds overlap by design SEBI defines a large cap stock as one of the 100 largest listed companies by average full market capitalisation, on a list AMFI updates every six months. A large cap fund must keep at least 80% of its money in those 100 names. A flexi cap fund must keep at least 65% in equity but may spread it across any market cap, a large and mid cap fund needs 35% in each, a mid cap fund needs 65% in companies ranked 101 to 250, a focused fund may hold at most 30 stocks. Now look at how concentrated the top of the market is. As of 30 September 2026, the ten largest weights in the Nifty 50 added up to 52.3% of the index, with the largest single stock at 10.4%. In the Nifty 100, the same ten names were 42.4%. (Index constituents are quoted for illustration only and are not recommendatory.) A fund manager with an 80% large cap mandate is choosing from a pool where the big names dominate, so even an actively managed large cap portfolio tends to carry the same large positions as the index. Put three large cap funds together and the overlap is the category, not the managers. The three-fund question people ask most ("which of my three large caps should I drop") has a first answer that is just arithmetic: by holding three, a large share of your money sits in the same top-100 names through three schemes, each with its own expense ratio. How large that share is, the consolidated sheet will tell you. Whether that is a problem is a separate question, covered below. Mid cap funds sit on a flatter index. The top ten of the Nifty Midcap 150 were 16.8% of that index on the same date, so two mid cap funds can diverge far more than two large caps. ## How much overlap is too much There is no official number for investors, and the people who publish numbers disagree. PrimeInvestor says there is no hard cut-off and treats 60 to 65% as high and 70 to 75% as very high. Kuvera calls 40 to 50% high and above 50% very high. Finnovate puts "high" at 30 to 50%. SEBI's only figure is a rule for fund houses: a sectoral or thematic scheme may not overlap more than 50% with another sectoral or thematic scheme, or with any equity category except large cap (measured quarterly as the average of daily values, with existing schemes given until 2029 to comply), and a value fund and a contra fund from the same house may both exist only if their overlap is not more than 50%. So a pairwise number between 40 and 60% is where most published opinion starts to frown, and above 60% published commentary treats the two funds as substantially the same portfolio. For large cap pairs, expect to be above that line most of the time, for the reason above. The more useful reading is from the consolidated sheet: - Top ten stocks above roughly half of your equity shows the funds hold largely the same large positions, whatever their names say. - One stock above 8 to 10% of the total, through several funds, is a single-company exposure the fund names did not show. - One sector (financial services is the usual one; it was 37.5% of the Nifty 50 in September 2026) above 35 to 40% of the total is the same reading at sector level. These are descriptions of what the sheet shows, not thresholds for action. ## Does anyone actually hold too many funds? The data that exists is partial. CAMS's study of investors in smaller (B30) cities, with data to January 2025, found that 47% held one scheme and 11% held more than five. That is 2.08 crore investors in one registrar's smaller-city book, so it says nothing about a 15-fund portfolio built in Bengaluru over eight years. We have not found a national figure from a primary source, so this guide does not quote one. What we can say is that the overlap problem is an accumulation problem. Nobody buys three large cap funds on one day. They buy one in 2017, another when a colleague recommends it in 2020, and a third because the bank's app suggested it in 2023. The consolidated sheet is how you find out what those three decisions added up to. ## The arithmetic of doing something about it This section describes costs, not recommendations. Whether any of this is right for you depends on your situation, and a decision to sell or switch is advice that only a [SEBI registered investment adviser](https://blog.corpus.finance/who-can-legally-give-investment-advice-india/) may give. Switching out of a fund is a redemption and a fresh purchase. For tax it is a sale: on equity funds, gains on units held 12 months or less are taxed at 20%, and gains on units held longer at 12.5% on long-term gains (equity shares and equity funds counted together) above ₹1.25 lakh in a tax year, plus cess. The holding period in the new fund starts from zero. Many diversified equity schemes also charge an exit load, commonly 1% on units redeemed or switched out within a year of each purchase (some charge less, or for shorter periods), and units are redeemed first-in-first-out, so a fund you have been adding to monthly has a trailing twelve months of units still inside the load window. The alternatives people weigh against that cost: stopping further SIPs into one of the overlapping funds (no tax and no exit load, the existing units stay), directing new money to a fund that holds different things, or spreading any redemption across tax years to stay under the ₹1.25 lakh threshold. Each is a calculation you can do from the consolidated sheet and your CAS. Which one to pick, if any, is the part this site does not answer. ## Frequently asked questions **How is mutual fund overlap calculated?** For each stock both funds hold, take the lower of the two portfolio weights and add those up. SEBI put this formula into its February 2026 circular on scheme categorisation. Some tools instead report the share of stock names in common, which is a different and usually larger number. **What percentage of overlap is acceptable between mutual funds?** There is no official figure for investors. Published opinion ranges from 30% to 65% for "high". Between large cap funds, high overlap is structural because all of them must hold 80% in the same 100 companies. **How do I check overlap across more than two funds?** Download each scheme's monthly portfolio spreadsheet from the fund house, multiply each stock's weight by the amount you hold in that scheme, and add up by ISIN across all schemes. The result is your stock-level exposure across the whole portfolio. **Where do I get a fund's holdings?** Every fund house must publish each scheme's full portfolio with ISINs within 10 calendar days of month end, on its own website and on AMFI's, as a spreadsheet. Unitholders with a registered email receive a link each month. **Does switching to reduce overlap cost anything?** A switch is a redemption plus a purchase. It can trigger capital gains tax (20% short-term, 12.5% long-term above ₹1.25 lakh a year on equity funds) and an exit load, commonly 1% within a year of each purchase. Stopping fresh SIPs into a fund triggers no tax and no exit load. * * * _Sources: SEBI circular of 26 February 2026 on categorisation and rationalisation of mutual fund schemes (equity category definitions, overlap formula in Annexure A, 50% overlap limits for sectoral, thematic, value and contra schemes); SEBI Master Circular for Mutual Funds dated 20 March 2026 (clauses 3.8 and 3.9 on categories and the AMFI market-cap list, 3.8.10 on monthly overlap disclosure by AMCs, 6.1 on monthly portfolio disclosure within 10 days in spreadsheet format); AMFI, average market capitalisation of listed companies for the six months ended 30 June 2026; NSE Indices factsheets for Nifty 50, Nifty 100 and Nifty Midcap 150 dated 30 September 2026, and NSE equity index methodology, September 2026; PrimeInvestor, "How to identify mutual fund overlap" (October 2022); Kuvera blog on overlap calculators (August 2026); Finnovate overlap calculator page (June 2026); CAMS and CII, "B30 Locations: Performance & Potential" (data to January 2025); Income-tax Act 2025, sections 196 and 198, in force from 1 April 2026; HSBC Mutual Fund tax reckoner for 2026-27; HDFC Large Cap Fund scheme document, July 2026, on exit load for each purchase or switch-in; Franklin Templeton and HSBC Mutual Fund addenda on first-in-first-out application of exit loads; Kotak Mutual Fund, July 2026, on the tax treatment of a switch. Index constituents and weights are quoted for illustration only and are not recommendatory. Corpus is in the process of registering as an investment adviser with SEBI. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Investment in securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing._ --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## Who is legally allowed to tell you what to do with your portfolio: SEBI RIA, distributor, robo adviser, AI chatbot Author: Saksham Mittal Author URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/author/saksham-mittal Published: 2026-10-21 Meta Title: Who is legally allowed to tell you what to do with your portfolio: SEBI RIA, distributor, robo adviser, AI chatbot Meta Description: The four kinds of people and products that answer "what should I do with my mutual funds" in India, what each is permitted to say, how each is paid, and how to check any of them on SEBI's own registers in two minutes. URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/who-can-legally-give-investment-advice-india Ask "what should I do with my portfolio" and you will get answers from a bank relationship manager, an app, a YouTube channel, a chatbot and, if you pay, a registered adviser. They operate under different registrations. Only a SEBI registered investment adviser may give you personal advice as a service, and is accountable for its suitability. This guide sets out the four categories, what each may say, how each is paid, and where to check a name against SEBI's registers. Corpus is itself in the process of applying for registration as an investment adviser, so we have an interest in this being understood correctly, and until registration is granted this site gives education only. ## The four categories SEBI registered investment adviser (RIA)Mutual fund distributor (MFD)Robo adviserAI chatbot or general appRegulated bySEBI, under the Investment Advisers Regulations, 2013AMFI registration (ARN), under SEBI's distribution frameworkMust itself be a SEBI RIA to give adviceNot regulated as an adviserMay give personal buy/sell/hold adviceYes, after assessing suitabilityIncidental advice only, tied to the products it distributesYes, if the operator is an RIANoPaid byThe client, as a fee; cannot take commission on advised productsFund houses, as commission from the regular plan's expensesThe client (fee)Subscription, ads, or nothing; no accountability for outcomesFiduciary duty to youYes, under the IA RegulationsNot under the IA Regulations; bound by AMFI's code of conductYes, through the RIANoRegistration numberINA followed by digitsARN followed by digitsINANone ### SEBI registered investment adviser An RIA is registered under the SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013. The registration number begins with INA. An RIA must assess your risk profile and suitability before advising, must act in your interest, must keep records of the advice, and may be paid only by you. The regulations separate advice from distribution, so an RIA cannot earn commission on the products it advises you into. SEBI requires an RIA to implement its advice only through direct plans. Fees are charged in one of two modes SEBI allows: a percentage of assets under advice, capped at 2.5% a year per family of clients, or a fixed fee, capped at ₹1,51,000 a year per family and revised every three years. ### Mutual fund distributor An MFD holds an AMFI Registration Number (ARN). Banks, individual agents and apps that sell regular plans are MFDs. Apps that sell direct plans without commission operate under SEBI's [execution-only platform framework](https://blog.corpus.finance/cost-of-investment-advice-india-by-portfolio-size/) instead. A distributor is paid by the fund house out of the regular plan's expense ratio, as a trail commission for as long as you hold the units. SEBI permits distributors to give "incidental" advice connected to the products they sell, but they are not fiduciaries and are not registered to give personal investment advice as a service. A distributor's remuneration comes from the scheme's expense ratio and is disclosed to you under SEBI's rules; an adviser's fee is paid by you directly. An individual cannot be both an RIA and an MFD. A company can run both activities only through a separately identifiable division, and the same client cannot be given both advisory and distribution services within that group. ### Robo adviser "Robo adviser" is a product description, not a regulatory category. A platform that gives you personal recommendations through an algorithm falls within SEBI's definition of an investment adviser, so the operator needs IA registration, with the same suitability, record-keeping and fee rules, plus a duty to disclose how far it uses AI and to answer for the tool's output. A platform giving personal recommendations without that registration would need to obtain it to do so. The INA number should be on its website. ### AI chatbots and general apps A general-purpose chatbot, a portfolio tracker's "insights" feature, or a finance YouTube channel can explain concepts, show you data and describe options. None of them are registered to advise you, none of them have assessed your suitability, and none of them are accountable if you act on what they say. SEBI's investor-education site has a standing caution about acting on tips from unregistered sources. That includes the output of a language model, however confident it reads. ## How to check anyone in two minutes Two public registers, neither of which costs anything to use. **1\. SEBI's list of registered investment advisers.** On sebi.gov.in, under Intermediaries, the "Recognised Intermediaries" page lists every RIA with name, registration number and validity. Search the entity's name. If it is not there, it is not an RIA, regardless of what its website says. Look for the INA number on the firm's site and match it. Registered advisers are also members of BASL, the BSE body that supervises them, and quote a BASL membership number in their own disclosures alongside the INA number. **2\. AMFI's distributor search.** amfiindia.com has an ARN lookup. Enter the ARN from your CAS, or the name of the app or bank, to confirm it is a registered distributor and see the registration status. A third check if you are being offered a managed portfolio rather than advice: SEBI's register of Portfolio Managers (registration numbers begin with INP). Portfolio management services carry a regulatory minimum investment of ₹50 lakh. New PMS regulations notified in October 2026 and effective from 1 April 2027 keep that figure and add a separate ₹25 lakh mutual-fund-only route. ## Reading the fine print on a website Four phrases and what they mean in regulatory terms: - **"SEBI registered"** on its own is not a category. Ask: registered as what? An RIA (INA), a distributor (ARN, which is AMFI not SEBI), a portfolio manager (INP), a research analyst (INH), a stockbroker (INZ). Each permits different things. - **"Unbiased" or "no commissions"** is a claim about pay. An RIA is required to be paid only by the client. For a distributor, "no commission" would not apply, since distributors are remunerated through the scheme, so ask which registration the firm is acting under. - **"Research" or "insights"** is the language of a research analyst (INH) or of an unregistered information service. Neither is personal advice. - **"Execution"** means the platform places orders. A distributor executes mutual fund orders. An RIA may implement its advice on your behalf only with your consent, only in direct plans, without any implementation fee, and must not earn commission on it. ## Where Corpus sits today Corpus has applied to SEBI for registration as an investment adviser. Until the registration is granted, Corpus does not give investment advice, does not recommend schemes, and does not tell anyone to buy, sell or switch. What is published here is education: how to read your own statements, how the rules work, and how to check who you are dealing with. When registration is granted, the INA number will be published on this site and will appear on SEBI's register, where you can check it the same way as anyone else's. ## Frequently asked questions **Can a mutual fund distributor give investment advice?** A distributor may give advice incidental to the products it distributes, and is bound by AMFI's code of conduct. Personal advice as a service, with a fiduciary duty under the IA Regulations, is reserved for SEBI registered investment advisers. **Is my bank relationship manager a financial adviser?** It depends on the registration the desk is acting under. Many bank wealth desks distribute under the bank's AMFI ARN; some banks also hold SEBI investment adviser or portfolio manager registrations. Ask which applies to you and check it on the relevant register. **Can an AI tool legally tell me which mutual funds to buy?** Only if it is operated by a SEBI registered investment adviser, with suitability assessed and the INA number displayed. A general chatbot or an unregistered app cannot. **How do I check if an investment adviser is SEBI registered?** Search the name on SEBI's Recognised Intermediaries list. Match the INA number shown there to the one on the adviser's website. **What is the difference between a SEBI RIA and an AMFI ARN?** INA is a SEBI registration to give investment advice for a fee. ARN is an AMFI registration to distribute mutual funds for commission. They are different roles, and an individual cannot hold both. * * * _Sources: SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013, as amended to November 2025; SEBI Master Circular for Investment Advisers, February 2026 (fee modes, implementation, advertisement code); SEBI investor-education page "Caution to investor" (investor.sebi.gov.in); SEBI Recognised Intermediaries register; SEBI circular of June 2023 on execution-only platforms; AMFI distributor registration and ARN search; SEBI (Portfolio Managers) Regulations, 2020 and the 2026 regulations effective 1 April 2027. Corpus is in the process of registering as an investment adviser with SEBI. Nothing on this page is investment advice. Investment in securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing._ --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. --- ## About Atrium Author: Saksham Mittal Author URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/author/saksham-mittal Published: 2026-10-21 URL: https://blog.corpus.finance/about Atrium is an inn at the head of the valley, built against the cliff in 1908 and run by the same family since. Eleven rooms, one kitchen, a stove in the lounge, and the lake walk from the door. ## The rooms Eleven, no two alike. Every one but two faces the valley; the two that do not face the peak, and they are the ones people ask for. Room 4 has no television, and the others are following. ## The kitchen Jonas cooks what the valley grows: bread from the village oven, butter from the farm below, trout from the river on Tuesdays, and whatever the orchard has done that year. Breakfast until eleven, because of the lake. ## This journal Where we write about the walks, the rooms, the kitchen and the seasons as they actually arrive. One post a week, on Mondays, when the rooms are quiet. ## Getting here The bus from the station stops in the village square four times a day. Tell us which one you are on and we will meet it. --- This blog is powered by Superblog. Visit https://superblog.ai to know more. ---