Mutual Fund Mastery interview preparation

Indian AMCs, distributors, registrars and the global fund houses that hire for the same skills — covering the trust structure, NAV and cut-off rules, SEBI scheme categorisation, debt risk and the Potential Risk Class matrix, passives, costs, taxation and distribution. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it; we do not invent attributions.

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100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions: 100
Traced to a firm: 32
Firms: 19
Updated: September 2026

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051A client holding 30 lakh in regular plans wants to move to direct plans. Walk me through the consequences.Costs, plans and commissionsIntermediatecase studyDistribution and salesWealth and advisory
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It is a redemption and a fresh purchase, so it triggers capital gains tax and possibly exit load, even though the scheme and the portfolio are identical. The right answer is almost never to switch everything at once — it is to stop fresh flows into regular, and move the existing corpus in tax-aware tranches.
Then walk it
1. The switch is two transactions. Units in the regular plan are redeemed at NAV, gains are taxable, and the proceeds buy direct plan units at that plan's NAV. There is no tax-free plan conversion in India.
2. Cost of doing it badly: suppose 30 lakh includes 10 lakh of long-term equity gains. At 12.5 percent above the 1.25 lakh exemption that is about 1.1 lakh of tax paid today. The annual saving from 1 percent lower TER is about 30,000 rupees, so you are roughly three to four years to break even.
3. So sequence it. First, redirect all new SIPs and lump sums into the direct plan — that is free. Second, switch the units that are already long-term and sitting on small gains. Third, use the annual 1.25 lakh exemption each year to move a tranche tax-free.
4. Check exit load before each tranche. Anything bought in the last twelve months in an equity fund will pay 1 percent, which usually makes waiting the better choice.
5. Then the thing nobody mentions: the moment he goes direct, the distributor relationship ends. If that distributor was the reason he stayed invested through 2020, the 1 percent was cheap. Ask what the distributor has actually been doing before advising the switch.
6. And if he does want advice, point him at a flat-fee registered investment adviser who works in direct plans. The cost becomes visible and separable, which is the honest version of what he is trying to achieve.
Where candidates lose it
Treating the switch as a free administrative change. It is a taxable redemption. The candidate who quantifies the break-even in years, and who asks what the distributor was providing before removing them, is giving advice rather than reciting a cost comparison.
Expect next
- How would you use the annual exemption to phase it?
- What if the holdings are in ELSS?
- When would you tell him to stay in regular plans?

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Say this

Then walk it

Where candidates lose it

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