Consolidated Account Statement: What Your CAS Shows, and What It Leaves Out
Two different documents are called a Consolidated Account Statement, and which one reaches you is decided by a single fact: whether you hold a demat account. If you do, a depository sends you a CAS covering your demat securities and your mutual funds together. If you do not, the mutual fund registrars send you one covering funds alone. SEBI wrote that split into the rules in November 2014 and it still governs. Neither version is automatically a complete picture of what you own, and the ways it goes incomplete are predictable enough to check in an afternoon.
Two documents, one name
Most explanations of the CAS describe it as though it were a single thing you either receive or do not. It is not. SEBI split the job between two sets of institutions, and the dividing line is whether your PAN is attached to a demat account.
The rule is set out in paragraph 4 of SEBI circular CIR/MRD/DP/31/2014, dated 12 November 2014. Consolidation is done on the basis of PAN. The depositories match their PAN databases against the PANs supplied by the asset management companies and mutual fund registrars, and allocate the work between themselves. For PANs that are common between a depository and the AMCs, the depository sends the CAS. In the other cases — the circular's own parenthesis is “PANs with no demat account and only MF units holding” — the AMCs and mutual fund registrars continue to send the statement, under Regulation 36(4) of the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations.
This is the fact that determines what your statement can possibly contain. A depository CAS covers mutual funds as well as demat securities. A registrar CAS covers mutual funds only. So the investor with a demat account gets the broader document by default, and the investor without one gets a mutual fund statement that was never designed to show anything else — not because anything went wrong, but because that is the rule.
| Depository CAS | Registrar (mutual fund) CAS | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sends it | NSDL or CDSL | The AMCs and mutual fund RTAs — in practice CAMS and KFintech |
| Who receives it | PANs common between a depository and the AMCs, i.e. anyone with a demat account | PANs with no demat account and only mutual fund units |
| Shares, bonds, ETFs held in demat | Yes | No |
| Mutual funds held in demat form | Yes | Yes |
| Mutual funds held in statement form | Yes | Yes |
| Consolidated on | PAN; first holder's PAN and pattern of holding where jointly held | PAN; first holder's PAN and pattern of holding where jointly held |
| Monthly electronic dispatch | By the 12th day from month end | Data supplied to depositories by the 5th day from month end |
| Half-yearly electronic dispatch | By the 18th day of April and October | Data supplied by the 8th day of April and October |
| Governing provision | SEBI circular CIR/MRD/DP/31/2014 | Regulation 36(4), SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations |
Why the split exists at all
The CAS is a policy artefact with a traceable origin. SEBI's circular opens by attributing it to the Interim Budget announcement of 2014, which proposed creating one record for all financial assets of every individual. SEBI then held what the circular calls extensive deliberations with the depositories, AMFI and the mutual fund registrars to implement that idea for securities market assets.
The stated goal in paragraph 2 was “a single consolidated view of all the investments of an investor in Mutual Funds (MF) and securities held in demat form with the Depositories”. That phrasing is worth reading closely, because it defines the ceiling. The CAS was scoped to securities market assets. It was never intended to show your bank balance, your provident fund, your insurance, your gold or your property, and it does not. A CAS is the most complete single document most Indian investors have, and it still covers only one slice of a balance sheet.
The system went live from the month of March 2015, covering transactions carried out during February 2015. Anything you bought before that date appears as a holding, but the transaction history the CAS shows begins there.
When it arrives, and why the frequency changes
The dispatch rule is conditional on activity, which surprises people whose statements seem to stop. Paragraph 13 of the 2014 circular sets it out: if there is any transaction in any of your demat accounts or in any of your mutual fund folios, a CAS is sent for that month. If there is no transaction in any of them, a CAS showing holdings is sent half-yearly instead.
So a quiet portfolio produces two statements a year, not twelve, and that is the system working correctly. One SIP instalment anywhere in your holdings is enough to switch you back to monthly for that month.
Two later circulars changed the mechanics rather than the principle. SEBI/HO/MRD/MRD-PoD-2/P/CIR/2024/93, dated 1 July 2024 and effective from 1 August 2024, made email the default mode of dispatch for every investor whose address is registered with the depositories and the registrars. It also added a useful safeguard: depositories must tell you by SMS, quarterly, which email address your CAS is being sent to. If you have never received that SMS, that is itself a signal worth chasing. Physical dispatch remains available, but now only where an investor asks for it.
SEBI/HO/MRD/PoD1/CIR/P/2025/16, dated 14 February 2025, relaxed the timetable after representations from the depositories and registrars. The registrars now have until the fifth day from month end to supply PAN data, rather than three. Depositories dispatch the electronic monthly CAS by the twelfth day from month end and the physical one by the fifteenth. For the half-yearly statement, data is supplied by the eighth of April and October, and the statement goes out by the eighteenth of those months electronically and the twenty-first physically.
Five ways a holding vanishes from a statement that looks complete
A CAS carries no warning that it is partial. It lists what the system could match to your PAN and stops, which means an incomplete statement looks exactly like a complete one. These are the failure modes, in rough order of how often they bite.
- You are not the first holder. SEBI requires consolidation on the basis of PAN, and specifies that in case of multiple holding it is the PAN of the first holder and the pattern of holding that govern. A joint folio is therefore grouped under the first holder's PAN, not yours.
- Your PAN is not updated with the depository participant or the AMC. The entire mechanism is a PAN match. SEBI's own investor guidance on receiving a CAS is to update your PAN with your depository participant or stock broker. A folio opened before PAN capture was routine, or under a slightly different name, simply never joins the match.
- Your registered email is one you no longer read. Since August 2024 email is the default channel, so an address that was correct in 2016 and abandoned in 2019 means the statement is being generated and delivered to nobody. The quarterly SMS naming the address exists precisely to surface this.
- Someone exercised the opt-out. Paragraph 11 of the 2014 circular requires depositories to give investors a negative consent option to decline the CAS. Where it is exercised, paragraph 12 stops the registrar from sharing that investor's mutual fund data with the depository at all. An opt-out ticked years ago produces permanent, unexplained silence.
- The demat account is empty and dormant. Where a demat account has nil balance and no transactions in securities or mutual fund folios, the 2014 circular routes it to a different statement rule rather than the CAS timetable.
An inference, flagged as one. The circular states that consolidation uses the first holder's PAN. It does not spell out what a second holder sees on their own statement. The natural reading is that a jointly held folio is reported under the first holder and so will not appear on the second holder's CAS, and that matches how the consolidation is described — but SEBI does not say it in terms, so treat it as a strong inference rather than a quoted rule, and check your own statement against a folio you know is jointly held.
The double count nobody warns you about
Because the depository CAS already includes mutual funds, adding a broker app's portfolio value on top of it counts the same money twice. This is the single most common arithmetic error in a hand-built net worth tracking spreadsheet, and it inflates the answer in a direction people are not inclined to question.
Take a worked example, with the assumptions stated. Suppose you hold three things: ₹3,00,000 of listed shares in a demat account, ₹6,00,000 of mutual funds bought through that same broker and held in demat form, and ₹4,00,000 of mutual funds bought directly from AMCs and held in statement form. Assume a single PAN, you as first holder throughout, and current values on the same date.
Your depository CAS reports all three, because it consolidates demat securities and mutual fund data together: ₹13,00,000. Your broker app reports the two things it custodies: ₹9,00,000. The true total is ₹13,00,000. Add the two documents and you get ₹22,00,000, overstating your position by ₹9,00,000 — sixty-nine per cent too high, from an error that feels like diligence.
The rule that avoids it is simple: a CAS is a superset, not a component. If you have a depository CAS, it is the base document and everything else is a cross-check against it, never an addition to it. This is the same trap in a different costume as a broker app being mistaken for a portfolio — the reason a portfolio tracker and a broker app answer different questions is that the broker can only ever report what it custodies.
Once you trust the total, the net worth calculator is the place to net it against the loans standing behind it, which is the number a CAS deliberately does not attempt. And once every holding is visible, the question that follows is what the mix actually is — rarely what people assume, because the pots that get left out of an allocation check are almost always the debt-heavy ones.
Which depository sends yours, and how to change it
If you hold demat accounts with both NSDL and CDSL, only one of them sends your CAS. Paragraph 5 of the 2014 circular sets the tiebreak: the depository holding the demat account that was opened earlier becomes the default, and it consolidates across both depositories and your mutual funds. The circular also requires that the default depository give you the option to choose the other one instead.
That matters when the older account is one you barely use. The statement follows the account's age, not its size or your attention, so the CAS for a substantial portfolio can be routed through a depository you associate with a dormant account and an email address to match.
How to pull each statement
Both versions can be requested directly rather than waited for. You will need the PAN and the email address already registered against the holdings; the statement is delivered to that address, which is also the fastest way to discover the address is stale.
- For the mutual fund CAS, request it from either registrar. CAMS and KFintech both serve a consolidated mutual fund statement keyed to your PAN and registered email.
- For the depository CAS, go to the depository that holds your demat account. CDSL and NSDL each provide a CAS login for the investors allocated to them.
- Reconcile the two against each other rather than summing them. Anything present in the registrar statement but absent from the depository one is a folio the PAN match did not pick up, and that gap is the finding.
- Check a folio you know is jointly held, and check one opened more than a decade ago. Those are the two cases most likely to be missing, and confirming them tells you whether your statement is trustworthy as a base.
A CAS is the best single record of your securities holdings that exists in India, and it is still not an inventory of what you own. It stops at the boundary SEBI drew in 2014 — mutual funds and securities held in demat form. Your EPF, your bank deposits, your gold, your property and your insurance are all outside it by design. Any net worth figure built from a CAS alone is a securities figure wearing a larger label.
Questions worth asking
Do I need a demat account to receive a Consolidated Account Statement?
No, but the absence of one changes who sends it and what it covers. SEBI’s 2014 circular splits the job: where a PAN is common between a depository and the mutual fund registrars, the depository sends a CAS covering demat securities and mutual funds together. Where a PAN has no demat account and only mutual fund units, the AMCs and mutual fund registrars send the statement instead, and it covers funds alone.
Why is one of my mutual funds missing from my CAS?
The most common reason is that you are not the first holder. SEBI requires consolidation on the basis of PAN, and for jointly held investments it is the first holder’s PAN and the pattern of holding that governs. A folio where you are second holder is grouped under someone else’s PAN. The other frequent causes are a PAN not updated with the AMC or depository participant, and a folio registered to an email address you no longer read.
How often is a CAS sent, and when should it arrive?
Monthly if there was any transaction in any of your demat accounts or mutual fund folios during that month, and half-yearly with holdings only if there was none. Since SEBI’s February 2025 revision, depositories dispatch the monthly electronic CAS by the twelfth day from the month end and the physical version by the fifteenth. The half-yearly statement goes out by the eighteenth day of April and October electronically, and the twenty-first in physical form.
Is a CAS the same as my broker’s portfolio statement?
No, and treating them as interchangeable is how people double count. A broker app reports what that broker custodies. A depository CAS reports every demat holding across your accounts with that depository plus your mutual funds, including units held in statement form that never touch a broker. The overlap between the two is real, so adding a broker portfolio total to a CAS total counts the same units twice.
Can I stop receiving a CAS, and can I start again?
Yes. SEBI’s 2014 circular requires depositories to offer investors a negative consent option to opt out of the CAS facility. Where that option has been exercised, the depository informs the AMC or registrar and the investor’s mutual fund data stops being shared for statement purposes. That is worth knowing if your statements stopped arriving without explanation, because an opt-out recorded years ago produces exactly that silence.
Related
The statement tells you what you hold. It will not tell you what it is worth today.
A CAS is a periodic snapshot delivered to an email address, priced on a date somebody else chose. TLDR Money values mutual funds, stocks, gold, EPF, property and deposits against current prices, and nets the loans standing behind them.
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Sources
- Securities and Exchange Board of India, circular CIR/MRD/DP/31/2014, “Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) for all securities assets”, 12 November 2014. The allocation between depositories and registrars, PAN-based consolidation, the first-holder rule, the default depository tiebreak, the negative consent option, and the monthly and half-yearly dispatch conditions.
- Securities and Exchange Board of India, circular SEBI/HO/MRD/MRD-PoD-2/P/CIR/2024/93, “Dispatch of Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) for all securities assets”, 1 July 2024, effective 1 August 2024. Email as the default mode of dispatch, the quarterly SMS naming the registered address, and physical dispatch on request.
- Securities and Exchange Board of India, circular SEBI/HO/MRD/PoD1/CIR/P/2025/16, “Revised timelines for issuance of Consolidated Account Statement (CAS) by Depositories”, 14 February 2025. The revised monthly and half-yearly dispatch deadlines.
- Securities and Exchange Board of India, Investor Website: Consolidated Account Statement. SEBI’s own description of the CAS and its guidance to update PAN with the depository participant or stock broker.
- CAMS and KFintech, mutual fund consolidated account statement request pages; CDSL CAS login.
This is an explanation, not advice about your money. TLDR Money is not a registered investment adviser and earns no commission on any product mentioned. Figures are illustrative; your own numbers, taxes and circumstances will differ.