MF investors feel shortchanged after payment glitch

financialexpress.com:

Mutual fund investors were left in a lurch on Tuesday when they placed orders hoping to buy the dip after market crash but their allotments reflected the next day’s Net Asset Value (NAV) after market recovered half its losses.

The issue was largely faced by a section of investors using discount broking platforms like Zerodha and Groww. A spokesperson from Zerodha told FE that 2-3% of transactions on its platforms were impacted.

“We work with multiple payment aggregators, and one of them faced issues on Tuesday. We do not have control over payment reporting since the broker-level funds pooling mechanism was discontinued back in 2022,” said Neelesh Verma,  product head and AVP, Coin by Zerodha, in a statement.

Benchmark Nifty 50 and Sensex had tumbled over 8% during the trading on Tuesday, recording their bigggest intraday decline in four years, as counting of votes for Lok Sabha elections sprung a surprise verdict with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failing to secure majority. However, the BJP-led NDA coalition comfortably crossed the majority mark.

Many investors saw the sharp decline as an opportunity to enter the market. As per the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s regulations, for any purchase transaction received upto cut-off time of 1500 IST on a business day, the same day’s NAV shall be applicable.

However, mutual fund investors alleged that this did not happen on Tuesday. Scores of investors complained on social media platforms that their purchases reflected Wednesday’s NAV when the market recovered half of Tuesday’s losses.

BSE and its wholly-owned subsidiary Indian Clearing Corp (ICCL) clarified that there was no delay in processing of the orders at their end. “We wish to clarify that on the day, ICCL