ONLINE FRAUD IN BANK ACCOUNT

ONLINE FRAUD IN BANK ACCOUNT

 

FOLLOWING FROM SOCIAL MEDIA

QUOTE//

 Let me tell you my experience with ICICI bank which happened 10-12 years back. I had 1037147/ in my bank account. I did not operate my account for almost 02 year and was looking for right opportunity to invest. One day when I checked my account I was to see only 137 rs was left in it. I lodged a complaint with police and with some political clout I expedited the case. There were three people who through phone banking changed my phone number, my email id and asked bank to issue new debit card and online id and pwd. When it came to my mailing address, they tricked the postman saying that I am Mr. Khulbe and do not give these couriers to my brother since I do not have good relation with my brother. They took debit card and online banking pwd and robbed me of more than 10 lacs. I had accused ICICI Bank, post office and these people for fraud in FIR. I wrote that since icici bank was the custodian of my money how can somebody penetrate their security system and rob the customer. This was the headlines in news paper and tv. My son was very happy that I am on tv channels 😊.
To cut the long story short these persons were arrested and some amount was recovered from them and rest was paid by icici to me to protect them from bad reputation.

Irrespective of whichever bank you open an account, It is time to be extra careful as you can see different approach by fraudster to rob you online. Only write online pwd in your mind and nowhere else. Anyone unknown who calls me for all these things, I ask for their Aadhar and PAN to be sent to me on WhatsApp. And truly speaking no one has sent their Aadhar and pan and if they send then I will
Ask them to come on video and verify. This is the only way to verify their credentials.

From a WhatsApp group

/// UNQUOTE

 

This is certainly "happenable" I have already heard about something happening like this in the past.
In the digital world of today when things have become convenient- they have actually become so for both the customer and the fraudster.
In this scenario few things that one should do is...
1. Not to have too many accounts one or two 2 are enough.
2. Check the account activity at least once a month.
3. Keep your mobile numbers and email address updated.
4. Do not keep too much money in savings account.
If you remember I had shared about 8 months earlier when I had some transit funds in very large figures in the bank which I had to plough back in  I converted the amount into a lot of small small FDs.
5. This is also the reason why I suggest that your investment in mutual funds should be directly with the AMC eliminating all the mediators.
6. It is a matter of experience but my experience of 27 years with Mutual Funds has shown that their maybe a sluggishness somewhere But your funds and money is always safe with the AMC.
7. Take regular statements from the bank and your investment  entities.
In fact NSDL n cdsl do send consolidated statements as per SEBI regulations but are not very regular. 

8. DO NOT GET ANYTHING BY POST IF YOU HAVE AN OPTION.

 

A Clarification

 Good morning Gents
I have got some feed back on the videos produced by CE Praneet Mehta with me, that they're too basic and what next...?
I said that is all to personal finance what else they want?
I was told that they want the simple names of 8-10 MFs!!

Now that doesn't work like that for 3 reasons .
Firstly my book or the videos I produce are largely for education purpose or to Kindle curiosity. They are generic in nature and need to be relevant irrespective of whatever happens in the market. It's like learning basics of Marine Diesel Engines after which you can work on any make or type.

Second Reason: is that in such a video I cannot suggest mutual fund schemes as it amounts to general recommendation. I cannot publicly recommend because I'm not qualified to do so as I'm not certified finance professional.

Third and most important reason: because of which I can suggest ON THIS GROUP based on my own investment profile is because not all funds are suitable for all investors.
I like to see the age , rank and the life stage of a person. It is is possible that he's a 4/E but married or a C/O and not married or married with grown up children.
So I like to adjust the selection of funds in keeping with the risk that a person can take and the money that he has at hand to invest or will have in future.
My recommendation of funds does not have any clash of interest like the professionals who recommend stocks. This is because  a MF need not be sold for profit booking like a stock ,so timing is irrelevant in MF investing.
You can even start investing on a holiday as the transaction will only happen during the working day.
In fact now my only transaction are for selling which I do leisurely on a weekend.
So please have faith in one to one interaction otherwise there are 1000s of videos and reccomendations on the net and it's curious no fund is ever on two sites as the best performer.

Ground Relation & Bird's Eye View of Inflation and Equity

Ground Relation & Bird's Eye View of Inflation and Equity  

I had written the article below a week before I read the following news item.
The price of wheat flour or Atta. Do you know how much it has risen in 1 year. The most basic of food which is used to make almost everything around us has risen all most 40% in just one year.
Now onto the story...
Inflation is always viewed upon as a villain or as a corrosive acid which eats into your hard earned income and salary and finally renders it as useless or insufficient almost like a wooden almirah or furniture rendered useless by termites.
Whenever we go out into the market after coming back from ship and look at the prices of essential commodities and manufactured products we almost get a shock. For that matter very rarely have I seen that people come back from ship and ask the wife what is the household expenditure OR the wife giving a straight answer.
But whether we ask our spouses and whether they tell us or not the fact remains that prices never ever come down.
In order to counteract this menace of The Invisible Giant called inflation there are only 2 ways.
First, is that we have a consistently increasing salary. This is really not possible as we have seen the salaries stagnating for over a decade in the Maritime world. Ever growing dollar is unable to keep up with the Indian inflation because the cost of living or the practical lifestyle inflation far exceeds the rate of rise of the dollar.
Second is by investing more in equities and less in Fixed income or Debt products.
This article basically tries to give a layman's point of view of why "equity will always outperform inflation " and it is very simple to understand.
After all the inflation means rising prices of the services and products that are available in the market and which the consumer always buys.
Consider a good diversified Mutual Fund investing in all the sectors of the economy and further on with at least two companies from each sector. Now as the product prices of various goods and services increase the earnings of the companies involved will also go up and so will their share prices of the companies. Infact not only the blue chip companies, the smaller and midcap companies related to those sectors will also go up.
Along with these  what will go up will be the NAVs of your mutual funds.
It has been observed and accepted that net return of your nav will be equal to the GDP growth plus the inflation.
So now you can easily see that your return on your investments in equity MFs will almost always exceed the overall inflation .
I have two very distinct and personal examples on this.
My younger brother worked for a battery company. Seeing the scope of his job I purchased few shares of it and conveniently forgot about it.
After 13 years of getting good dividends when I sold them to foot a large family expenditure I had made enough profit to buy batteries for all the cars that I would buy later on in life.
Second is a rather sad example. Where a family member had to go on a brand of insulin manufactured in India. Seeing how many doses were being recommended by the diabetologist I purchased some shares of that company. The company has grown enough to foot the bill of the insulins for quite a few years.
If you will extend this example to the banks, auto companies that manufacture buses and cars, cement, Steel, Glass, electric wires and switch gear, water pipes, car Tyres, lubricants, medicines and hospitals, petrochemical products, gold, watches, clothing& fashion, mobiles and the list goes on...
It is obviously not possible for us to buy shares of each and every company in every sector. So the best is to buy the mutual funds  that buy these companies at the cheapest cost which means index or active which ever is possible and buy them continuously. At any given time you will be buying the company at a different price than before and even if it is higher the already purchased shares would have risen to give you good Returns.
This is the only counter measure that you have for the inability to not have unlimited income but certainly unlimited demands; which incidentally he is also the first lesson of economics books. 

COST OF MONEY

COST OF MONEY

 

Isn't that a weird headline ?

How do you attach cost to money when money provides for all costs?

How can money be cheap or expensive?

Let's modify it slightly and call it-

" Cost of accessing money"!

Does it make things better?

Still not ? Ok then let's get some scenarios.

Imagine a person starts working in a different city or country and gets his salary check every month. But he does not get time to open a bank account and deposit that cheque.

Another scenario...

A retired person has to go the bank to get his pension only to be informed that the pension has not been deposited yet by the government or his employer.

He also has to provide a once a year Life certificate.

Yet another relevant one...

You work on a ship and receive your monthly salary in USD in cash at the end of the month. You find the remittance cost by your employer to be bit high and the banks ashore do not accept cash for telegraphic transfer.

Another one...

While applying for some exams or US Visa you need to send a bank demand draft of a particular bank which is quite far from your home.

Yet another one...

While going for a business loan by a MSME or a smaller company the charges for processing are deducted.

 

All these are examples of accessing cost of money. These are charges which necessarily reduce the net worth for accessing for any product or service or the utility value.

We balk at 2% MDR charges by a seller on credit cards but do not think twice about 20% something that bookmyshow charges for booking a ticket.

Not only all these charges but also the time spent to access that money must be taken into account as opportunity cost.

But how does this affect us  "The Mariners" as investors, consumers and service receivers.

If you start applying first principles think about how much time, fuel and cost of vehicle your spouse or you spend at visiting the bank to withdraw some money, make a bank DD, book a ticket, pay a bill. If you start quantifying your time with money that you earn on board it will make you lose sleep.

But that is what modern financial technology combined with information technology combined with electronic communication has done to the cost of accessing money.

All the above examples were given to make you realise what the scenario was just a decade ago when for various document renewals we had to visit Mumbai.

The cost of travel, stay, lining up outside offices and banks used to take away a third of the precious leave period..

Now imagine the agencies like banks that have brought these Fintech services to you on your mobile , how are they getting paid.

By reducing the cost of mutual funds purchases by almost 150% today how are AMCs still managing to make money for you.

By now you must have got the picture and what I'm intending to drive at.

Your salary coming by every month end into your account is a service that your employer does to you.

If that facility was not provided the results could be disastrous.

Not only you would have to provide money to your family before joining ship, you wouldn't be able to invest it during your stay( this problem still exist with some Indian companies whose ships are plying mostly in foreign waters).

Yes now the cost of accessing money has shifted to a different paradigm now! Mobile and the portable computing.

All these facilities reduce the load on your leave time and provide you with ample opportunity to use it as quality time till learn and do new things and also teach your children - some new things.

This is possible as long as these devices don't become your " devices for destruction of your time ."

I personally have been very cautious and miser with my time .

I always used to quantify my ego minute with the salary that I earned and later on became so paranoid that I wouldn't even waste it to make some quick money by dabbling in the stock market.

As a result I was able to travel with my small family - far and wide in the country.

The effect of this was seen on my daughter's ICSE - history exam. There used to be a question of identifying the picture that was given of a historical monument and some related questions on that.

Her class teacher complained that she is showing off by saying that she had seen the monument. I had to charm the teacher by saying that she had so enthused my daughter that now we actually travel to see these monuments.

Anyway... Back to the cost of money.

Please appreciate, accept and use the modern methods of money handling. Set up systems to efficiently use your cash flows so that you don't have any liabilities and your money can be invested by the 5th of the month.

Don't waste your time in trading or speculation about money, rather use it too acquire newer skills, read news books, get more degrees, develop new hobbies empower your family, raise your children in the true sense.

All this has been made possible because the Speed and Cost of accessing money has gone down leaving you lot of quality time to spare.

Even good roads, highways, efficient cars, cheaper flights... All these have added to reducing the cost of accessing money and services and leaving you time which if used correctly will pay you rich dividends and if missed it will leave you very poor.

Just to share with you even this article has been written on a flight from Mumbai to Dehradun today- reducing the cost of Money by utilising time you see...

An innocent & Genuine Query

 Xxxx Sxxx 4/E
Ok sir. I started reading your book. Regarding the downfall of adani  how we can trust share market. I mean, no offense sir. How can we closely watch the market. Here for adani, in a day or two he lost billions.

Rajeeve: This is a very genuine question and quite often asked.
A short and simple reply is we don't need to watch it. All we need to do is invest in Mutual Funds because there are experts who are doing it for you- not only watch it they are actively buying and selling for you for a very small fee and without incurring any capital gains tax for you.
Secondly, you're not really investing in a single company but in the Indian economy at large. A single company going up and down will not really make a difference to your portfolio even if it is State Bank of India since the maximum exposure allowed to a single company in any MF scheme is 10%. As long as you have faith in the economy of your country you will gain and for that you will first have to invest. If you don't have any faith in the economy of India then everything is useless even real estate or FDs won't work because they're all based on faith.

Thirdly, these funds managers are very smart. Except for one MF , no-one  had any exposure to Adani group. Only the passive funds lost a little.

Fourthly, you have said that Adani lost ₹Billions . Well that loss is notional, tomorrow if people start buying that loss will reverse.

Finally, His loss does not represent the loss of the investors unless they have purchased his shares. Then again if they have purchased without due diligence they will have to pay. This is applicable for all Investments otherwise they will give results like chit funds .

So you may have understood that without participating in equity you will not create an appreciable financial cushion for yourself.Since you're busy with your profession it's better to let other professionals manage it for you via MFs with minimum charges and maximum transparency and safety.

The Story of Personal Finance of my Generation

 
Lot of our young colleagues have asked about my journey of financial planning. Though I have said about this lot of times on the phone I would like to document for others so that they may make corrections to the mistakes that we have made.
From that stand point I am narrating a story which is not only about me but also my batch match and colleagues of approximately same age.
Our DMET batch passed out in 1986 in the middle of the recession in shipping which was necessity off shoot of Iran Iraq war of the seventies and was still carrying on.
The otherwise job placement situation which used to be more than rosy for DMET had become very bleak. In a senior batch they was just about 25% placements and for our batch it had come down to 20%.
However within about 4 to 5 months of our passing out this situation started improving and those of us who passed out late could also get placements in foreign companies.
The scars and insecurity of no placements was playing at the back of the mind of most of us and that somehow changed the behaviour of everyone in a different way. Some of us took the refuge of FDs, NSC ,Indira Vikas Patra, LIC policies sold by the hostel warden while others started purchasing land and real estate.
The economic liberalization of 1991 coincided with most of us getting down for our chief engineer exam and getting married.
The dollar was devalued almost 25% in a year and some everyone's salary went up and the credit was given to the lady luck of the young wives.
1992 coincided with the great scam of Harshad Mehta which brought in SEBI whose rule grew in importance in the succeeding quarter of a century.
The 1991 government liberalized lot of things for the non residents and introduced a new type of fixed deposit bank account called NRNR or non resident non repatriable deposit, the proceeds of which were entirely tax free and the rate of interest was as much as 18%.
This continued till 1996 after which the account was phased out as the government's foreign exchange position became stronger. 1993 saw the emergence of private sector in the mutual fund industry which was earlier dominated by UTI , SBI and one or two other small players.
Due to the great NRNR deposit there was no need for most of us to look at equity or even read about mutual funds.
However for some reason the word mutual fund had attracted my attention while I was in school itself. There was something very democratic and socialist in the word but I had not known about the working or the nitty gritty of it till I myself started sailing.
I acquired some literature from investment banks during my shore leaves and tried to make head and tale of it.
Still tethering to the fixed income and Bank deposits because those were the days of 12% + interest there was no real incentive to move towards mutual funds except some half hearted moves of rupees 5000 and 10000 in various funds.
As the debt funds also were giving returns of 12% and above those days,  I personally had restricted myself to those and also used to advise my colleagues regarding same.
Almost all the people that I have sailed with opened PPF accounts and have only recently started closing them after completing 30 years.
My venture into equity funds came after the dotcom crash and I started investing in HDFC equity ( now calledFlexi cap) ,prudence, Reliance Growth age vision and Sundaram select midcap at the turn of the century.
With time my exposure to HDFC equity fund constituted almost 25% of my portfolio in over a period of 17-18 years.
In 2006 I took exposure to DSP midcap and small cap.
2010 to ABSL front line equity and ICICI bluechip.
These were my main stays of the portfolio and there  few funds having small amounts for testing.
Debt funds for feeding these Equity funds were changed off and on.
In 2007 the entry load on mutual funds was scrapped and the direct investment category was instituted in 2013 , though I did not change over to this mode till recently and that too at the insistence of my great distributor.
Today I do possess a larger number of funds and that is because my investment philosophy has changed and I like to restrict exposure to one fund to 60-75 lacs.
But when I see in retrospect is that given the tools and the information available my distributor always suggested the correct funds.
In that light I can safely say that having a varied exposure to Flexi cap funds and supported by Mid Cap and small cap funds one can achieve optimum Returns.
My exposure or diversification of portfolio is into MFs, ETFs, gold, PPF, very minor amount in NPS and real estate only. Though I don't consider real estate in value as I will never be able to enjoy the gains unless someone offers 100% white.
My view of the world has changed in these 40 years...and changed so many times.
I have seen how wealth gets accumulated and also how it gets lost...all in one generation.
I have seen intelligent and wealthy people bite the dust and mediocre but persistent souls thrive.
I have learnt that if your wealth is not donated and consumed it destroys itself.
The most apt definition of investment is "Delayed Gratification". Hence our definition of gratification will change with time and we should have the means at all times to fulfill those elements of Gratification ... Which sooner than later will include donation and charity.
Even Buddha said the first duty of a householder is to earn and generate wealth for his family and the society around him .
As Mariners you have a positive impact on the society as you move ALMOST 94% of all the goods produced on the face of this earth.
So help you God.