Equity funds add 3.45 lakh folios in December

The year 2015 ended on a positive note for the mutual fund industry as equity funds continued to add investor accounts or folios in December.

The latest SEBI data shows that equity funds added 3.45 lakh investor accounts, taking the total folio count up from 3.43 crore in November to 3.47 crore in December. The inflows were also positive. Equity funds received net inflows of Rs. 3,708 crore in December. Fund officials say that the industry is adding folios due to new SIP registrations. This is evident by the fact that the total SIPs in the industry has gone up to around 80 lakh now.

The increasing appetite for equities is also evident by the growth in ETF folios. SEBI data shows that ETFs, which track equity indices, added 5,683 folios in December, taking the total folio count in this category to 2.60 lakh.

Balanced funds too received healthy inflows (Rs. 4,511 crore) which was reflected in the folio and AUM growth in this category. Balanced funds added 61,085 folios in December, which took the total folio count in this category up to 23.45 lakh. Balanced fund AUM has increased by 56% from Rs. 27,015 crore in April 2015 to Rs. 42,193 crore in December 2015.

Apart from equity and balanced funds, debt funds too saw a healthy growth in folios. Debt funds added more than two lakh folios in December, mainly due to a slew of FMP launches. The industry launched 25 FMPs which collected Rs. 4,007 crore in December.

Barring gilt funds, Gold ETFs and overseas fund of funds, all other categories saw positive folio growth.

All in all, the industry added 6.15 lakh folios in December.

Folio growth in December 2015