Check your Brokerage

I have active accounts with Sharekhan, Motilal Oswal and ICICI Direct. In past I have used Citi Kotak & Five Paisa account as well. While the quality of online portal, customer service etc. requires a separate post to share my thoughts and experience, here is what I am planning to do to save on brokerage.

I am using this basic excel calculator to check if brokerage is charged correctly on my transactions. Given my level of trades, it makes sense for me to shift my trades from ICICI Direct to a low cost brokerage. ICICI Direct is expensive and from sometime, I have been observing very poor response time of the online portal, particularly when we need to trade most urgently (e.g. 21/22-Jan-2008 when Market crashed, the ICICI Direct online portal was extremely slow).

I am planning to open Reliance Money brokerage account. They have a scheme of flat brokerage. So for example, I can pay Rs. 500 upfront and trade upto Rs. 500,000 in a year, resulting in an effective rate of 0.1%. I am not sure if there is something in fine print so let's see how this experience turns out. I am also planning to open account with Angel Broking. While one can not make duplicate applications in IPO, one can have multiple accounts as long as they are with different DPs. This is what I am made to understand. While it's an expensive affair, it helps to have access to research reports from different brokerage houses.

While low brokerage matters, one thing is certain though. If the on-line portal is not good, I will not stay put. Convenience, flexibility for offline trades, user friendliness, response time / speed, customer service etc. matter a lot to me.

Regards,

Rohit