I have been investing in mutual funds since November 2005. I will retire in a year or two. I intend to remain invested for the next five years. My agent is asking me to book profits. Please review my portfolio and suggest measures to improve the quality of my portfolio.

Apart from these mutual funds, I have close to Rs 40 lakh invested in bank fixed deposits. Please advise me about how much more should I invest, given that I intend to retire soon and have no source of income by way of provident fund or any other pension scheme.

 - JP Dhandha

Given that you will retire in about a year or two, your asset allocation is optimal. In reviewing your portfolio, our objective has been two-fold. First, we aim to rationalise your mutual fund holdings. The second objective is to allocate money to appropriate debt instruments that are capable of yielding an income for you, post-retirement.

As of now, you have Rs 10.71 lakh (Rs 1.2 million) spread across 10 funds, and what needs to correct is the skewness in the allocation between funds. At the same time, it must be said that your fund selection has been good, with a high weightage to 5- star and 4 -star rated funds. Even among the non-rated funds, Franklin India Flexi Cap has been a good performer.

Equity Portfolio

What is a little worrisome is the level of concentration in your portfolio. A high allocation of 29 per cent to a single fund is not recommended and we suggest a rationalisation of this holding.

It would be advisable for you to book your profits in Magnum Contra and invest the proceeds in another large-cap oriented fund of a fund house other than SBI mutual fund. For this purpose, funds such as Reliance Vision, HDFC Top 200 and Franklin India Flexi Cap fit the bill.

Similarly, your exposure to Reliance Growth is very high. But rather than exiting, we would suggest you should stop making incremental investments to this fund and move it to DSPML Opportunities. This will ensure that over a period of time, its proportion in the portfolio will come down by itself.

Another step towards consolidation would be to move out of ABN AMRO Opportunities and Magnum COMMA, and use these funds to increase holdings in Reliance Vision and Franklin India Flexi Cap.

Going forward, periodically review your asset allocation. As and when the equity markets run up substantially, book profits in your equity holdings and move this money towards debt instruments.

This will ensure your investments don't get excessively skewed towards equity, thus adding to your risk. As simple rule, re-balance on an annual basis, or whenever the proportion of debt and equity changes by 10 per cent, whichever is earlier.

Income Yielding

Your corpus of Rs 40 lakh (presently invested in fixed deposits) is what you should be looking at to generate regular stream of income for you to sustain upon, post-retirement.

We would recommend two instruments, the Post Office Monthly Scheme and the Senior Citizen Savings Scheme. Both these products are available at post offices. You can download the forms for these schemes at: http://nsiindia.gov.in/.

The Senior Citizen Savings Scheme is available for people aged above 60 years and carries an interest guarantee of 9 per cent per annum paid quarterly. This interest payout would be taxable. The maximum amount that can be invested is Rs 15 lakh (Rs 1.5 million) with five-year tenure.

The Post Office Monthly scheme on the other hand will give you 8 per cent per annum payable monthly. The maximum one can invest here is Rs 300,00 under a single account and Rs 600,000 under a joint account.

The maturity period is six years with a 2 per cent exit load for withdrawal after one year but before three years and a 1 per cent deduction on the deposit will be payable for withdrawal after three years. Apart from these safe instruments that will ensure capital protection, you could look at Monthly Income Plans managed by various mutual fund houses.

However, the quantum and frequency of dividends paid here will not be assured. While some MIPs have managed to produce returns in the 10-14 per cent per annum range during 2006, there is no guarantee that this performance would be repeated this year. Even bank fixed deposits are yielding attractive returns these days. But they score poorly on the regularity of income.

In a Nutshell

We have suggested an allocation of your funds between various instruments. However, you must first assess your monthly expenses before making this allocation.