Manish Aggarwal (Financial & Legal Consultant)

Things to know about Govt. of India 7.75% Savings (Taxable) Bonds, 2018 May 23, 2020, by Manish Aggarwal: Financial Advisor The Govt. of India announced 7.75% Savings (Taxable Bonds), 2018 in the year 2018. Let’s understand the salient features of these bonds and whether you should consider investing in these bonds. The Current Context Interest rates on bank fixed deposits have been going down for some time now. Interest rates for Small Savings held strong during these times providing some relief. However, in March 2020, the Government of India cut interest rates on small savings schemes too. While products such as PPF and SSY still remain attractive in comparison, there are liquidity constraints with these products and hence may not be good for investors looking for income immediately. If you are looking for regular income, you can look at options such as bank FDs, SCSS or SWP from debt mutual funds. However, FD and SCSS interest rates are dow...

Dear Investor Friends, When it comes to mutual funds, worldwide, there is a raging debate between active and passive funds. The latter have been steadily gaining market share given their value proposition of low management fees. Active v/s Passive Funds – the Indian context What’s an Active Fund As the name suggests,  an actively managed fund is one in which a manager makes decisions about how to invest the fund's money. Managing an Active Fund involves active buying and selling of stocks with the objective of outperforming a chosen benchmark index. To achieve this, the mutual fund engages the services of portfolio managers and analysts. Such cost of managing an Active Fund is recovered from the mutual fund investors by way of a management fee (currently around 2% in India). What’s a Passive Fund In contrast to an Active Fund, a  Passive Fund simply follows a market index. It does not have a manager.  Thus, a Passive Fund will simply mimic a give...

1. What is NPS ( National Pension Scheme )? The National Pension Scheme is a social security initiative by the Central Government. This pension program is open to employees from the public, private and even the unorganized sectors with the exception of those from the armed forces. The scheme encourages people to invest in a pension account at regular intervals during the course of their employment. After retirement, the subscribers can take out a certain percentage of the corpus. As an NPS account holder, you will receive the remaining amount as monthly pensions post your retirement.  Earlier, the NPS scheme covered only the Central Government employees. Now, however, the PFRDA has made it open to all Indian citizens on a voluntary basis. NPS scheme holds immense value for anyone who works in the private sector and requires a regular pension after retirement. The scheme is portable across jobs and locations, with tax benefits under Section  80C and Section 80CCD ...