Nippon MF portal yet to be restored after cyber attack

Mumbai: A cyber attack on the website of Nippon Life Mutual Fund, India's fourth-biggest asset manager with 20 million unique subscribers, has prevented thousands of unitholders from transacting through the Nippon portal since April 9.

Nippon Mutual Fund has assets of ₹5.5 lakh crore under management, and a large retail base. Investors cannot make any fresh financial transaction - a purchase, redemption, or starting a new SIP ( Systematic Investment Plan) or SWP (Systematic Withdrawal Plan) through the website now.

Existing SIPs or SWPs continue as usual without any problem.

"Owing to a cyber incident on our IT infrastructure on April 9, transactions through digital assets like websites and mobile applications are inaccessible due to maintenance activity being carried out," says Abhijit Shah, chief technology officer, Nippon Life India Asset Management. "Our preliminary investigations have shown that there has been no compromise on the systems and investor data. We are working on restoring the services back at the earliest, and would like to assure our investors that their investments and data are completely safe in our environment. Furthermore, there is no impact on our investment and operations-related activities due to this incident."

In the event that investors are not able to carry out transactions on the company's website, they can use the registrar's KFintech website, MF Utilities, MFCentral or make a physical redemption by reaching out to the fund house office or registrar office. However, this could be inconvenient for them. Investors who transact through distributors portals can continue to use them.

Several unitholders took to social media, raising concerns over their inability to transact directly on the Nippon Life website. "Though there are other options available to transact, it is worrying that this has not been solved despite a week passing by, which hurts investor confidence, " says Viral Bhat, founder, Money Mantra.