The mutual fund industry has added 55,108 new distributors in the past five years, says an AMFI note sent to fund houses.
AMFI data shows that the number of individual ARN holders went up from 52,194 in March 2013 to 1.07 lakh in March 2018, reflecting a healthy growth of 106% in five years.
The MF industry has in fact added the maximum number of distributors - 21,400 in FY 2017-18.
Of the 1.07 lakh ARN, 88,688 ARNs are of individual distributors while 10,392 and 974 are senior citizen and new cadre of distributors, respectively. AMFI has segregated distributors in three categories – individuals, senior citizens and new cadre of distributors’ i.e. former government officials distributing plain vanilla mutual funds.
A Balasubramanian, Chairman, AMFI and CEO, Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund attributed this growth to focus of fund houses to reach B15 cities. “If you look at the AMFI data closely, the industry has more distributors in B15 cities compared to T15 cities. This is due to the focus of fund houses on b15 locations to increase business. Also, the increasing demand for mutual funds has extended the supply chain.”
While the industry has 55,331 distributors from B15 cities, T15 cities have 51,851 distributors as on March 2018.
Seconding Bala’s view, Kalpen Parekh, CEO, DSP BlackRock MF said that attractive performance of equity funds has drawn many investors to the mutual fund fold. “Many investors have witnessed their money grow dramatically over the last three years due to the market rally. These investors spread the word for mutual funds among other people. Since many of these people are new investors, they need handholding by distributors to invest in mutual funds. This has created demand for the advisory profession. In my view, advisory is a noble profession and people can make good money from this,” he said.
Further, AMFI data shows that over 26,700 ARNs got renewed in FY 2017-18. Of these, over 15,382 ARN renewals were from the individual category. In FY 2016-17, 22,861 ARNs were renewed.
As on March 2018, the mutual fund industry has over 2.43 lakh ARNs of which over 1 lakh are individual distributors and 1.35 lakh are employees.
All these distributors are KYD compliant ARN holders.
