💬 Mutual fund restrictions for NRIs, learned the hard way

After I moved to the US, I tried to put some money into a couple of Indian mutual funds. I'd invested before as a resident and assumed it would be the same, with a bit more paperwork. Both applications got rejected at the very first step, the KYC check. No warning, no phone call. The reason given was that those fund houses don't take applications from NRIs in the US or Canada. I had no idea that was even a thing. I assumed the rules were the same everywhere. When I dug around, someone told me it's about extra reporting work for the fund houses. I can't say if that's the full reason. I'm no expert, and I only know what I was told. All I know is it had nothing to do with me, my savings or my account. It cost me about 3 weeks of evenings, calling helplines and reading forums, before I found any fund houses that said yes. The smaller list I found worked through an NRE linked account, which I had to open first. That added a couple of weeks. I almost gave up halfway and put the money in a savings account. But it's done now, and the money is invested through one of the houses that accept people like me. It annoyed me that none of this was on the first page of any fund house's website. You only find out after your papers bounce back, which is a waste of everyone's time. So if you're in the US or Canada, ask whether they take NRIs from your country before you apply. It's one email, and it would have saved me a month.

Used exactly that NRE linked route myself after getting rejected by two fund houses last year, opening the linked NRE account first added maybe two extra weeks to the whole process but otherwise worked smoothly once set up properly.