Don’t buy funds if EUIN is missing

Expense Account, Mint

OK. So there is one more acronym to remember and deal with. Jostling for space with PAN, KYC and UID is a newly born creature. Meet the little fledgling—it’s called the EUIN or the Employee Unique Identification Number. When it grows up, it will cover the three million sellers of financial products in India. To see why it was born, we’ll have to go back to the 13 September, 2012, circular of the capital market regulator (http://bit.ly/11TWCtu) that laid out the road map of change for mutual fund (MF) manufacturers and sellers. Titled ‘Steps to Re-energise the Mutual Fund Industry’, the circular used carrot and stick to get the industry to do more than chase after the wholesale part of the market. Buried in the section that dealt with the distribution of MFs was a direction to the industry association, the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi), that it should “create a unique identity number of the employee/ relationship manager/ sales person of the distributor interacting with the investor for the sale of MF products, in addition to the Amfi Registration Number (ARN) of the distributor.” And that the MF application form should have a box for the EUIN.

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Smart Money Episode 4

Segment 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym_lpQGh4q4

Segment 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC7vrd_-pqQ

Segment 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcQVLSK_mPg

Focus shifts from income to expenditure

Expense Account, Mint

The world hit the Millennium Development Goal (set in 1990) of halving poverty five years ahead of time in 2010, but delve deeper into the numbers and it is clear that India has reason to worry. It has been China’s ability to take 660 million people out of poverty that has powered the achievement. India has been the drag on this number with Indian poor, who live on less than $1.25 a day, making up about half of the 1.3 billion poor in the world. Poverty persists in India though per capita income has quadrupled in the 15-year period to 2010. Direct reflections of persistent poverty are poor social indicators. Life expectancy at birth in India has improved from 58 to 64 over the 15 years, but we’re behind our immediate neighbours—China is at 73, even Bangladesh and Pakistan are ahead at 67—not to speak of global peers. India’s access to improved sanitation more than doubled to 31% of the population, but China is at 55%, Bangladesh at 53% and Pakistan at 45%. The persistence of poverty and the sluggishness of social indicators suggest that something is wrong with the Indian model of growth.

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