Celebrating this Diwali with gifts that grow, not just glow

Instead of traditional gifts, consider mutual funds or insurance products, which grow in value

- Aprajita Sharma

Diwali is a festival of lights and a celebration of joy. We exchange gifts with loved ones to make them happy. But what if you twist this gifting ritual a bit this year?

Instead of a physical item, give something that grows in value—a financial gift. A mutual fund scheme or an insurance product can be more meaningful than jewellery, a new phone, clothes or sweets. You can gift them not just to family members but also to friends. Here’s how you can gift mutual funds and insurance:

How to gift mutual funds

If you hold multiple mutual fund schemes, you can easily gift units to loved ones. Although earlier limited to demat accounts, Sebi has expanded this to include non-demat transfers, though awareness remains low. Gifts can also be made to non-relatives.

“Transfer of money via bank account is common. A similar trend will likely emerge for MFs as awareness grows about non-demat transfer of units. As of now, out of 100 million financial transactions that we process every month, 1,000 are transfer requests,” Anuj Kumar, chief executive, mutual fund transfer agency CAMS, said.

The process is simple. Both transferor and transferee must have a running folio with validated KYC. You can check the status on RTA websites— CAMS or KFintech—using PAN. If it shows “verified”, update KYC with Aadhaar to make it “validated”. If the transferee has no folio, they can open a zero-balance folio.