We earn commissions.
Here’s exactly how it works.
When you invest in a regular plan through us, the fund house pays us a trail commission: a small percentage of your invested value, every year, for as long as you stay invested. It comes out of the fund’s expense ratio. You never pay us a separate fee.
Ask us about any fund we recommend, and we’ll tell you what we earn on it.
The number most distributors hope you never work out
Trail commission isn’t the same across funds. Equity and ELSS funds pay a distributor many times more than liquid, overnight or index funds. Fund houses disclose this, but few investors ever put the two side by side.
So when you tell a bank relationship manager you need to park ₹10 lakhs for eight months before a house registration, and the conversation drifts towards an equity scheme, it’s worth asking whose need is being met.
Same client. Same ₹10 lakhs. Two possible recommendations.
Bar length shows what the distributor earns each year. Illustrative only: actual rates vary by fund house and scheme.
That isn’t advice. It’s sales wearing a financial-planning costume.
The ELSS trap
ELSS funds genuinely save tax, up to ₹1.5 lakhs a year under Section 80C. They also come with a three-year lock-in. For you, that lock-in is a condition of the tax benefit. For a distributor, it’s a guarantee: three full years of commission on money that legally cannot leave.
That’s why “I want to save tax” so often gets the answer “ELSS”, before anyone checks whether your PF, insurance premiums and home loan already use up your 80C limit, or whether you can really lock the money away.
We’ve recommended ELSS to clients who needed it, and told others not to buy it. The commission rate was the same both times.
Why we don’t recommend the highest-paying fund
Three reasons, in descending order of nobility.
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We put it in writing
Every recommendation is documented against the need you told us about. Keep that document. If what we recommended doesn’t match what you asked for, you have every right to question it.
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We stay small on purpose
No AUM targets, no branch quotas, and no fund house partnership manager across the table with a quarterly payout plan. We’ve sat in those meetings in previous roles. It’s why we left.
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And the least noble, but most reliable: it would cost us money
Trail commission stops the day you leave. For a firm of 400 families, one bad recommendation doesn’t just lose a client. It loses that family’s referrals and years of income. Misadvising you would be financially irrational. In five years, not one family has left.
Two questions we’d rather answer before you ask
Do fund houses offer you extra incentives?
Yes, and it’s worth knowing because it’s legal, common and rarely discussed. Fund houses run engagement programmes for distributors: hit a volume target in a scheme, and there are extra payouts, study tours or “training conferences” in attractive locations.
We receive these offers. We don’t take part in scheme-specific volume programmes, because they would put a fund house’s quota ahead of your need. We work with whichever fund house’s fund is right for you.
You earn commissions and call yourself need-based. Isn’t that a contradiction?
It would be, if every fund paid the same. They don’t, which is exactly why openness matters. The contradiction isn’t earning a commission. It’s earning different amounts depending on what you recommend, and never saying so.
A fee-only adviser charges you directly and says they have no conflict of interest. We aren’t that, and we don’t pretend to be. We’re a distributor that tells you about its conflict of interest, manages it deliberately, and lets you hold us to it.
Common questions about how we’re paid
Do I pay CurateMyMoney anything directly?
No. Our income comes entirely from trail commissions paid by fund houses. You never receive an invoice from us.
What exactly is trail commission?
A percentage of your invested value, paid every year by the fund house to your distributor, out of the fund’s total expense ratio. It continues for as long as you stay invested in regular plans through that distributor.
Are regular plans a rip-off compared with direct plans?
Direct plans are cheaper by roughly 0.5–1% a year, which is the distributor’s commission. Whether that’s worth paying depends entirely on what the distributor actually does for you. If you’ll pick the funds, rebalance, plan withdrawals and hold your nerve in a crash on your own, buy direct.
What happens to your commission if I switch to direct plans?
It stops immediately. We will still tell you when a direct plan suits your situation better, and we have.
Do all fund houses pay you the same rate?
No. Rates vary by fund house and scheme. We don’t choose fund houses based on who pays more, and you can ask us what we earn on any fund we recommend.
How are you different from a fee-only SEBI-registered investment adviser?
A fee-only adviser charges you directly, earns nothing from fund houses and can’t distribute funds. We distribute mutual funds and earn trail commissions on regular plans, which we tell you about openly. Both models can be honest: ours depends on you staying, theirs on you paying. Choose the accountability you prefer.
Ask us what we earn on any fund we recommend.
We’ll tell you. Then we’ll tell you why it’s the right fund for you, or why it isn’t.
CurateMyMoney is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor (ARN-184811). Mutual fund investments are subject to market risks. Read all scheme-related documents carefully.