Portfolio Clean Up 2026: The HNI Guide to Reducing Product Clutter and Improving Efficiency

Why Portfolio Clean Up Matters for High‑Net‑Worth Individuals

For HNIs, investment portfolios often grow organically over many years. Products are added during market rallies, through new relationships, to capture short‑term opportunities, or as responses to changing goals. While diversity is valuable, too much variety without a clear framework leads to complexity without corresponding return benefits.

Unnecessary product clutter can result in:

• Fragmented risk exposure
• Higher costs and tax leakage
• Difficulty in monitoring performance
• Duplication of underlying holdings
• Confusion in decision making

A deliberate portfolio clean up for HNIs brings focus and allows you to concentrate on those parts of the portfolio that matter most for long‑term outcomes. The goal is not to reduce complexity for its own sake, but to improve investment efficiency and risk reduction in portfolios while preserving strategic diversity.

Step 1: Identify Overlapping Holdings (The "Pseudo-Diversification" Trap)

In many diversified portfolios, you may find the same underlying stocks appearing in multiple schemes. This results in what is often called pseudo‑diversification.

What Overlapping Holdings Reveal

For example, the top 25 companies in the NIFTY 50 often appear repeatedly across many equity schemes. If several schemes hold the same top stocks, your portfolio may appear diversified but, in reality, it is effectively concentrated in a small set of high‑weight stocks.

How to Spot True Overlap

To identify overlapping holdings:

1. List the top 10 to 20 holdings of each equity scheme.
2. Compare the list across schemes to see how many times the same stocks appear.
3. Assess the weight of overlapping stocks in the overall portfolio.

Data Insight: When the top 25 companies of a major index show up across multiple schemes, you may be paying separate fees for effectively the same exposure. This increases cost without increasing diversification.

Reduce the Number of Equity Schemes (The 15-Scheme Rule)

While diversification is a foundational principle of risk reduction in portfolios, there is a point of diminishing returns.

Why Over 12 to 15 Schemes Is Too Many

Beyond 15 schemes, the benefit of adding more products tends to plateau. Instead of meaningful diversification, the portfolio becomes harder to manage, and benefits are marginal at best. Excess schemes result in higher monitoring costs and difficulty in performance comparison.

How to Decide What to Keep

• Prioritize schemes with distinctive underlying exposures.
• Evaluate correlation: Keep those with low correlation to your core holdings.
• Consistency: Retain schemes with strong, process-driven performance.

Step 3: Categorize Assets by Correlation (Growth vs. Defensive)

To truly improve investment efficiency, assets should be grouped by how they move in relation to each other.

The 65:35 Strategy Framework

We advocate for a disciplined 65:35 strategy—maintaining 65% in Growth Assets and 35% in Defensive Assets. Because these groups are less correlated, combining them improves diversification. The "Defensive" bucket provides a cushion when "Growth" assets face volatility.

Step 4: Review High‑Cost or Tax‑Inefficient Products

Fees and taxes are silent killers of compounding. Minimizing these can materially boost net outcomes.

• Expense Ratios: Moving from regular to direct plans can save 0.5%–1% annually.
• Transaction Frequency: Higher turnover leads to greater costs and tax leakage.
• Tax Optimization: Use the clean-up to realize capital losses to offset gains.

Step 5: Consolidate Across Platforms for Better Monitoring

Many HNIs hold investments across multiple platforms, blurring the picture of asset allocation. Consolidation allows for:

• Clearer Risk Quantification: Seeing total exposure to specific sectors.
• Quicker Decision Making: Unified data leads to faster strategic adjustments.
• Reduced Tracking Errors: Centralized reporting reconciles cross-platform gaps.

Step 6: Align Everything to One Wealth Strategy

A clean portfolio must support a coherent wealth strategy. Disparate products often reflect fragmented thinking. Map each product to a specific strategic role and eliminate "drift"—products that no longer fit the 65:35 framework. This is at the heart of Private Wealth. Uncomplicated.

Conclusion: Why Portfolio Clean Up Improves Efficiency

A portfolio clean up for HNIs is a strategic refinement that improves control and strengthens outcomes. When product clutter is removed, investment decisions become more confident and wealth becomes easier to manage. Clarity is about ensuring every holding has a purpose and every decision is supported by data.

A clean portfolio does not just perform. It performs with grace and predictability.

Source: Anand Rathi Wealth Research; Frameworks for "Private Wealth. Uncomplicated." (2026).