ClearTax launches e-KYC; aims to ease mutual funds investment

India's leading tax e-filing platform ClearTax has launched an e-KYC (Know Your Customer) registration feature to enable users to invest in mutual funds in a quick and seamless manner.

All that an investor needs to do is to enter details of his/her PAN, Aadhaar on the ClearTax website, and generate an OTP on their Aadhaar-linked mobile number.

In under five minutes, the system will process the details, following which the user can start investing on the platform.

"With the eKYC feature on ClearTax, users no longer have to worry about providing a bunch of documents for KYC fulfilment, but can simply sit back and experience a quick, smooth and paperless registration process," said CEO, ClearTax, Archit Gupta.

"They can then choose from some the best performing mutual funds and tax-saving plans hand-picked by our experts, and get started on achieving their wealth creation goals," he added.

KYC is a government-mandated compliance and an important one-time identification process required for investing in mutual funds.

ClearTax's fully paperless e-KYC feature requires no signatures or physical documents, thus reducing the time taken to invest in mutual funds.

The platform shows the top-performing mutual funds for new investors and chooses the right mix of funds which best suit their tax-saving needs and investment goals.

The website also assesses a fund's past returns, the fund manager's performance, its consistency, and performance against its peers among other things to shortlist the funds.

When a user enters the requisite details such as budget, tenure, etc., the platform suggests a portfolio of the best mutual funds options which have consistently performed well over the last five to ten years.

In fact, ClearTax goes to the length of suggesting changes if a particular fund has not performed well in 6 months.

Once the e-KYC is done, and the investment option has been set up, the investors can easily track the performance of their investments through the easy-to-use ClearTax UI.

The transition from one mutual fund to another is also facilitated by the website.

In a country where assets under management (AUM) to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is still the lowest at 8 percent, fintech solutions like ClearTax help lower the over-dependence on traditional investing options like bank deposits, real estate, and gold.