who no longer take the help of advisers to remain stuck with regular plans they should shift to direct plans immediately bear in mind professional help from registered investment advisors rias or mutual fund portals comes at a cost this cost needs to be taken into account when calculating the cost advantage of direct plans my investment corpus is rs 50 lakh and a 1 cost differential works out to be rs 50000 even if i have to pay rs 500010000 to an ria it is worth it says dk upadhyay a professional based out of bhilai chhattisgarh when going for expert advice make sure they do not have a conflict of interest they shouldnt be receiving commissions from mutual funds there have been instances of mutual fund distributors recommending perpetual sips without advising investors to review them periodically as they fear that the review may lead to investors stopping them in the middlewhich will make them lose out on their commission with up front commission coming down misselling has reduced in openended funds but it is still very much there in closedended funds says bajaj founder and ceo clearfunds the reason for misselling is that mutual fund distributors get to keep the higher up front commission or guaranteed trail commission for the entire tenureusually 35 yearsof the scheme my adviser only gets the fee from me and does not receive commissions from mutual funds i get unbiased advice says upadhyay but investors need to be careful because several mutual fund distributors have become rias after transferring their existing business to relatives and continue to maintain monetary relation with fund houses through these associates also corporate entities are allowed to do both the best strategy that if you are seeking advice from an ria insist that the investments be into direct plans this way youll avoid bearing duplicate expenses of his fees as well as commissions which bring down the returns sriraman is clear in his financial philosophy no one can represent my interest like myself so my investment philosophy is simple trust but verify your ria he says also read mutual fund advisers earning commission from amcs may not give you the best advise 1 higher return means a much bigger corpus due to compounding the corpus built via products with lower costs will be significantly higher over longer periods where to purchase the funds from once you identify suitable direct mutual fund schemesby yourself or with the help of riasbuying them is the next big task on hand thanks to structural changes in the industry this has become much easier now execution of direct plans was a big problem a few years back but not anymore says deepesh raghav founder personal finance plan heres how you can buy your chosen direct plans mutual fund portals websites maintained by the respective fund houses are your first option the key advantage here is that the transactions on these portals are entirely free its also an easy option initially i was