What an AMFI-Registered Distributor Can and Cannot Do for You

At the bottom of every page on this site sits our AMFI registration number. Most visitors scroll past it. It is the most important fact about our relationship with you, because it defines the outer edge of what we are permitted to do.

India regulates financial intermediaries by what they do, not by what they call themselves. Two people can both help you pick a mutual fund and be governed by entirely different rule books, with different duties owed to you and different ways of being paid. It is worth knowing which one is sitting across the table. With us, and with anyone else.

Two Registrations, Often Confused

A mutual fund distributor holds an ARN, an AMFI Registration Number, issued by the Association of Mutual Funds in India. Registration turns on the NISM Series V-A: Mutual Fund Distributors Certification Examination. An individual distributor must hold that certification personally; a firm must have at least one employee who holds it, along with a linked Employee Unique Identification Number (EUIN). A distributor’s job is to distribute schemes: to explain them, to help you transact, and to service the investment afterwards.

A registered investment adviser, or RIA, is registered directly with SEBI under the SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013. An RIA’s job is to give advice, and to be paid by you for giving it.

We are the first of those two. We hold an ARN. We are not a SEBI-registered investment adviser and we do not hold ourselves out as one.

How We Are Paid, and Why You Should Care

This is the part that usually goes unexplained, so here it is directly.

As a distributor, we are paid a commission by the asset management company whose scheme you invest in. That commission comes out of the scheme’s expense ratio, and SEBI is explicit that it can come from nowhere else. The Master Circular for Mutual Funds requires that all scheme-related expenses, “including commission paid to distributors, by whatever name it may be called and in whatever manner it may be paid, shall necessarily be paid from the scheme only” and not from the books of the AMC or its sponsor.

So it is not a separate invoice to you. It is also not free. You pay it indirectly, as part of the fund’s ongoing costs.

That sentence became simpler to write in 2025. Until then, AMCs could also deduct a per-transaction charge from your subscription amount on investments above ₹10,000 and pass it to the distributor. SEBI abolished those transaction charges with immediate effect on 8 August 2025. Now the commission route is the only route.

This is also the mechanical difference between a regular plan and a direct plan of the same scheme. SEBI requires a direct plan to carry “a lower expense ratio as no distribution commission is paid under such plan,” and a separate NAV. Anyone who tells you a regular plan costs you nothing is either confused or not being straight with you. What the difference buys is the service around the investment. Whether that is worth it is a judgement you are entitled to make with the numbers in front of you.

A distributor cannot charge you a separate fee for investment advice. Charging for advice is precisely what makes someone an investment adviser under SEBI’s definition, and that requires SEBI registration. What a distributor may give is basic advice incidental to the schemes it distributes, paid for by commission. If an intermediary is collecting both a commission from the manufacturer and a fee from you for advice on the same investment, something is wrong, and you should ask them to explain their registration.

One thing we want to correct about how firms like ours often describe this. Telling you what we earn is not a courtesy we extend on request. AMFI’s Code of Conduct requires distributors to disclose all commissions received or receivable “for the different competing schemes of various Mutual Funds from amongst which the scheme is being recommended to the investor,” and separately to tell you which fund houses we are affiliated with and that products we do not distribute may also be worth considering. That duty is not conditional on you asking. We put it in writing either way.

What We May Not Call Ourselves

There is a rule here that surprises people, and it is worth quoting.

Regulation 3(3) of the SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013 says:

“no person, while dealing in distribution of securities, shall use the nomenclature ‘Independent Financial Adviser or IFA or Wealth Adviser or any other similar name’ unless registered with the Board as Investment Adviser.”

AMFI has consolidated its own guidance on distributor naming, including the list of acceptable and unacceptable names, into Chapter 1.3 and the Appendix of its Master Circular for Mutual Fund Distributors. Its Code of Conduct goes a step further than the regulation and also bars “Consultant” in a distributor’s registered name, along with any phrase that misleads about the entity’s role.

So the titles are not decoration. When a firm calls itself a wealth adviser, it is making a claim about its registration, and that claim is checkable. AMFI publishes a list of ARNs it declared invalid for failing to comply with exactly this naming requirement.

What Falls Outside Our Registration

Our ARN covers mutual fund distribution. It does not cover, and we do not offer under it:

We also run two practice areas that sit outside the AMFI registration altogether: regulatory compliance support and real estate services, the latter used mostly by clients living abroad who own property in India. Those are ordinary professional services. They are not regulated by AMFI, they are not investment advice, and we would rather say so plainly than let a registration number in the footer imply a wider licence than it carries.

How to Check Any of This

Do not take our word for it, or anyone else’s. Both registers are public and free, and neither is linked from the front page of the site that hosts it, which is probably why almost nobody uses them.

To check a mutual fund distributor: AMFI’s Locate a Mutual Fund Distributor page searches by name or ARN. The same page links three registers worth knowing about: ARNs suspended or terminated from mutual fund business, mis-selling and misconduct cases reported by AMCs, and the invalid-ARN list mentioned above.

To check an investment adviser: SEBI publishes a searchable register of Investment Advisers by name, trade name or INA registration number, with the validity of each registration. There were 1,045 registered advisers on it in September 2026, which is a useful number to hold in your head the next time someone describes themselves as one.

Then ask two questions of anybody, us included:

  1. What is your registration number, and what type is it? ARN, SEBI RIA number, IRDAI registration, insurer-issued agency code. They are different things and the holder knows which they have.
  2. How are you paid, and by whom? Commission, fee, or both. A straight answer to that tells you more about an intermediary than any amount of performance discussion.

If you would like to go through our registration, how we are paid and what we do not handle, book a call.

Sources. AMFI Master Circular for Mutual Fund Distributors, 14 January 2026 (see also the AMFI circulars index, which survives reissues) · AMFI guidance on MFD nomenclature · SEBI (Investment Advisers) Regulations, 2013, as amended to 25 November 2025 · SEBI Master Circular for Mutual Funds, 20 March 2026 · SEBI circular on transaction charges paid to mutual fund distributors, 8 August 2025.

Regulatory position as at 14 September 2026. SEBI and AMFI amend these instruments frequently; please check the current text at the source rather than relying on this summary.

General information about how financial intermediaries are regulated in India, not investment advice. Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully.

North Pole South Pole Financial Services · AMFI registration number 286779 · AMFI-registered Mutual Fund Distributor.