While there are various categories of Mutual Fund schemes, there are different varieties of facilities as well. These facilites can be opted by the investor to direct their Mutual Fund investments to make regular investments, to transfer funds from one scheme to another scheme, to withdraw a fixed amount etc. Read 5 Key plans offered by Mutual Funds and their benefits here;
A plan that helps you invest systematically
A popular plan offered by all Mutual Fund houses, Systematic Investment Plan or SIP as referred commonly is an efficient plan for investors to make regular & disciplined investments without needing to time the market. SIP can help you achieve your financial goals by starting with a small sum of amount (amount as low as Rs. 500/- or Rs. 1000/-) invested periodically. It also prevents you from timing the market with its automatic market timing mechanism of Rupee-Cost Averaging. Another notable feature of SIP is ‘Power of Compounding’ where the periodic investments generate returns over the invested period and similarly the returns upon the previous investment get added to the new investment. To know more about SIP, visit http://www.motilaloswalmf.com/knowledge-centre/5-keys-of-investing/5-key-features-of-systematic-investment-plan-sip/11
A plan that helps transfer funds from A to B
Systematic Transfer Plan (STP) can help you stagger your investments over a period of time and maintain a balance of risk and return. Here, funds are transferred from one fund to the other. This facility is mostly favoured by investors who have invested lumpsum in a liquid or debt fund and want to systematically/periodically transfer to a balanced or equity fund. Otherwise, fund managers use this feature internally to rebalance the portfolio across debt and equities during market volatility. Investors who opt for STP need not bother about cash availability. Alternatively, STP is also known as Systematic Switch Plan
A plan for regular income
Systematic Withdrawal Plan (SWP) is a facility that enables investors to withdraw a fixed amount from the mutual fund scheme they’ve invested in at a monthly, quarterly or annual frequency. Withdrawals can be made irrespective of the market value of the investments and would be subject to the availability of account balance of the investor. If you opt for SWP, you get a tax-advantage where withdrawals under SWP will be the same as applicable to equity and debt funds. Equity investors will have to pay short-term tax gains if the holding is less than 12 months. To make SWP extremely efficient, it is better to start withdrawing one year after the initial investment in case of equity/balanced funds
Transfer dividend from fund A to fund B
Dividend Transfer Plan (DTP) facility offers investors to transfer the dividend declared in a source scheme to a target scheme. This facility offers the investors a benefit because though dividend is being transferred, the original investment remains untouched. Hence, if one opts for DTP from a debt scheme to an equity scheme, only the dividend amount is exposed to the vagaries of the market. This could benefit the equity investor in the long run as the corpus would grow more with the dividend transfers. DTP limits the downside risk of capital erosion as well as helps the in building a corpus of equity assets which possesses the potential of offering higher returns
Appreciate the capital, systematically
While STP refers to a plan where investors invest a lumpsum amount in one scheme and regularly transfer a fixed amount to another scheme. However, in a Capital Appreciation STP, only profits from source fund in excess of a predefined amount are transferred to the target scheme while all other STP features remain the same
