Reflecting the positive sentiment among investors, the mutual fund industry has added over 7.62 lakh folios overall in September. Thus, the total folio count across all categories increased to 5.06 crore in September from 4.98 crore in August 2016.
Equity
Thanks to fresh inflows in existing funds on the back of a rally in equity markets, equity funds continued to add new folios in September. Equity funds, including ELSS and ETFs, have received net inflows of over Rs. 5,200 crore in September.
SEBI data shows equity funds added over 3.98 lakh folios in September. ELSS funds too saw net inflows of Rs.495 crore and addition of 53,000 folios.
Balanced funds
Balanced funds continue to gain popularity among investors as the category saw an addition of 89,000 folios and net inflows of Rs. 3,275 crore in September. After the changes in tax structure of debt funds, many investors have turned to balanced funds. As a result, the total folios in balanced funds increased from 27.70 lakh in August to 28.59 lakh in September.
Debt funds
Debt funds have also seen good traction as the total folio count in this category increased by 2.79 lakh in September, largely due to addition in income funds. Income funds added over 1.87 lakh folios in September. Liquid funds too added close to 89,000 folios in September. Similarly, gilt funds added 2700 folios in September.
ETFs
ETFs, which track the equity indices, have added of 3700 folios in September.
Meanwhile, gold ETFs lost close to 4,900 folios in September. Experts attribute this drop in folios to profit booking on account of the recent increase in gold prices and increasing popularity of gold sovereign bond funds.
Overseas fund of funds
This category is seeing continuous erosion in folios. The category lost over 1,700 folios in September.
While the industry’s total folio count has exceeded five crore, experts believe that after deduplication based on PAN, the industry would roughly have 1 crore unique investors.
Folio count as on September 2016
