What Ho! Ah! To live with a What Ho on my lips and a Gentleman's Gentleman… {sigh}… Such is life…

More ICICIDirect Stupidities – Purchasing a Mutual Fund, Growth Option

I have had a long running love-hate relationship with ICICIDirect for half a decade now. More hate than love. Their platform is closely integrated with the ICICI Bank online banking platform and that makes things very convenient. Of course I haven’t looked at what others like Share Khan & Reliance Money are doing now in 2009 but back in 2004 they were not offering Mutual Funds and one had to write a cheque etc. So I am still with ICICIDirect.

Okay now to the meat of the story. I decided to put some money into a couple of Liquid Plus funds and after some research on Value Research shortlisted 3 funds.

• FORTIS Money Plus Fund - Regular GROWTH
• JM Money Manager Fund - Super Plan Growth
• DWS Cash Opportunities Fund – Regular Plan GROWTH

Then I headed over to ICICIDirect to make the purchases. I bought the Fortis fund as well as the JM fund. Then I started the process of purchasing the DWS fund. That is when the fun started…

ICICIDirect is showing INCORRECT Data for both the Value Research Star Rating as well as the Fund’s NAV

Problem No# 1

The Purchase link takes the user to a Fund search page and subsequently to a search results page. The search results for DWS is in the screen shot above. Note the incorrect data displayed on this page. ICICIDirect is supposedly showing the Value Research Star Rating and in this page is showing NA instead of the correct 5 Star Rating. Secondly the NAV displayed is INCORRECT! Not just stale (16 Oct 2009) but incorrect. The correct NAV for 16th Oct 2009 is 12.0755 as you can see from the DWS web site in the screen shot below.

Value Research Page for the same DWS fund

Correct NAV for Oct 16, 2009 from the DWS web site.

I ignored the mistakes in the ICICIDirect page for the fund and clicked the “Purchase” button for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund. This is what I got:

ICICIDirect Purchase page for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund’s Growth Option!

Problem #2

See the problem above? I selected the Growth Option for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund but this page is showing me the Div-Reinvestment Check Box as if for a Dividend Option! I called Customer Support and after a 5 minute wait & a transfer to another section (I selected Online Trading –> Queries in the automated menu!) I was told that “The Final Confirmation Page will have the Div-reinvestment check box disabled and HENCE there is no problem”

Okay, so I go there. Entered an amount and clicked the “Proceed for Confirmation” button, leaving the Div-Reinvestment check box “Unchecked”. This is what I got:

Final Confirmation page for DWS Cash Opportunities Fund purchase

See for yourself! Does that page make sense? I am buying the Growth Option of a Mutual Fund and this screen is telling me that my Dividend will Not be Reinvested!

Secondly note that the “Final Confirmation” page is still showing me the wrong NAV!

To double check I went back to the Fortis fund I had purchased earlier…

Fortis Fund – Growth Option & NO Div-Reinvestment Check Box!

Everything is as it should be! No Div-Reinvestment Check Box shows up on this screen. I then entered an amount and clicked the “Proceed for Confirmation” button…

Opps! Growth Option AND the Div-Reinvestment Check Box is Back!

I had not noticed this before. Most probably I had not paid enough attention to this. The Div-Reinvestment check box is unchecked & disabled but present on the “Final Confirmation” page for the purchase of the Growth Option of a Mutual Fund!

How am I, the customer, supposed to read this screen? My Growth Fund will give me Dividend Payouts? Or am I just supposed to blindly believe that ICICIDirect knows what it is doing and that this is really the Growth Option and no Dividends will be paid out?

Of course the liability is mine. because if the above statement is NOT true then they can always point at their software’s UI and say - “See that Div-Reinvestment Check Box? It means that YOU screwed Up!”

Stupid ICICIDirect!