As a mutual fund investor for a long time, I have tried my hands at quite a few interfaces, portfolio managers and software that lets you manage your investments better. In that sense, my tryst with myCAMS was rather late. Yet, like any other app these days, it was easy to start, with familiar and easy-to-follow sections. The biggest advantage with this app was the consolidated view, without my maintaining any updated records of my mutual fund transactions. All I needed was my registered e-mail ID to make the start and it helped that over the years I had moved to a single e-mail ID for all my mutual fund investments.
The success of the consolidated view is to have a single e-mail ID for all your mutual fund investments because if you do not have that, this app will not help you with the consolidated view. This is perhaps its only big limitation other than the limitation of not finding details of your investments in schemes from fund houses like Franklin Templeton, UTI Mutual Fund and Sundaram Mutual Fund, which is because these AMCs do not come under CAMS and hence investments in them are not reflected in your myCAMS app details.
The interface on the phone and the website was similar, which meant I was not trying to familiarise the basic orientation differently for different screen sizes. The good part was the experience I found using the myCAMS app handy, though it took a while to get a fix on a few features, says Narayan Krishnamurthy to tap and transact, as there was no need to create a new folio. I could transact in the same folio and was able to invest in the direct plan through the app and save on commissions. The various heads such as manage portfolio, transact, statements, transaction details and customer care were all intuitive and placed for easy action.
There are a few features that myCAMS could work on. For instance, at present, you can see cost of purchase and current value under Valuation link, but it is only individual AMC-wise and not a consolidated view. Still, it is a start and I am sure CAMS is working towards making their app and portfolio manager a lot more valuable, with a few tweaks that are easy to add at this point in time. Perhaps by using the PAN number as the reference, myCAMS will be able to address the issue of consolidating investments with different e-mail IDs, a suggestion that will make the app more userfriendly and the app more of a necessity.