Three decades ago in Chennai, Computer Age Management Services (CAMS) was founded by a first-generation entrepreneur. It took to the emerging niche service opportunity as a registrar and transfer (R&T) agent to the mutual funds in the mid-90s when Indian mutual fund industry (MF) opened up. Thereafter, the company’s evolution and growth over the last two-plus decades has been aligned to the growth of the MF industry, participating as a technology-enabled service provider and a catalyst. “Over the years, we have grown from an entrepreneurial venture to a completely professionally managed company with marquee shareholders such as Great Terrain Investment Ltd, NSE Investments Ltd and HDFC group owning the company,” says Anuj Kumar, CEO, CAMS, the technology-driven financial infrastructure and services provider to mutual funds and other financial institutions. According to a Crisil report in August, 2020 titled, ‘Assessment of the Mutual Fund Registrar and Transfer Agents Industry in India,’ it is India’s largest R&T agent of mutual funds with an aggregate market share of approximately 70 per cent based on mutual fund average assets under management (AAUM) managed by their clients and serviced by them. Growing market share Over the last five years, alone CAMS has grown the market share from approximately 61 per cent during March 2015 to approximately 69 per cent during March 2020, based on AAUM serviced, according to the Crisil report. The mutual fund clients include four of the five largest mutual funds as well as nine of the 15 largest mutual funds based on AAUM during July 2020, states the report. “With the initiative of creating an end-to-end value chain of services, we have grown our service offerings and currently provide a comprehensive portfolio of technology based services, such as transaction origination interface, transaction execution, payments, settlement and reconciliation, dividend processing, investor interface, record keeping, report generation, intermediary empanelment and brokerage computation and compliance related services, through our pan-India network and electronic interfaces to our mutual fund clients, distributors and investors,” adds Kumar, who over the years has leveraged the domain expertise, technology, processes and infrastructure to diversify the offering of services to cater to a variety of other financial services sectors. In the electronic payment collections services business, CAMS manages mandated transactions, including registering of mandates, initiation of collections, reconciliation and the related reporting services for mutual funds, non-banking finance companies and banks. Whereas in the insurance services business, CAMS offers processing of new business applications, holding policies in dematerialised form, servicing policies and other support functions to insurance companies, while in the alternative investment funds services business, CAMS provides services to investors, manage records and perform fund accounting and reporting, among other services, for alternative investment and other types of funds.