SEBI Chief Ajay Tyagi has urged AMCs to improve the quality of investor awareness programmes (IAPs) and utilise the two basis-point of AUM set aside for investor education more efficiently. He was speaking at the first AMFI Mutual Fund Summit held yesterday in Mumbai.
Tyagi said of the Rs175 crore IAP corpus, AMFI has spent only Rs28 crore so far. “IAPs are neither CSR nor altruism. IAPs could be a core strategy to grow business. Use IAP corpus wisely. I would urge the industry to take it up seriously,” he said.
The SEBI Chairman has asked fund houses to reach out to the masses through ground level activities and use digital media to create awareness about mutual funds.
Last year, SEBI had asked fund houses to give 50% of the two basis-point corpus meant for investor awareness programmes to AMFI.
Based on AUM of Rs20 lakh crore, as on June 2017, AMFI has close to Rs200 crore to invest in creating awareness about mutual funds this year. This means the industry body will get Rs17 crore every month from the industry.
AMFI data shows that 35 AMCs have conducted 8,203 programmes in 211 cities covering over 4.03 lakh participants across the country in FY 2016-17.
In April 2017, 25 AMCs conducted 483 programmes in 145 cities covering 23,471 participants.
So far, 40 AMCs have conducted 71,610 programmes in 485 cities, covering 25 lakh participants, between May 2010 and April 2017.
