Industry adds over 1 crore folios last fiscal

The MF industry has added 1.04 crore folios last fiscal taking the total folio count to 8.18 crore folios as of March 2019, shows SEBI data. Nearly 85% of these folios were in equity funds. Equity folios grew by a healthy 17% from 5.94 crore in March 18 to 6.93 crore in March 19.

Equity category includes pure equity, ELSS and balanced funds.

Compared to FY17-18 when close to 1.6 crore folios were created during the year, there has been some slowdown in folio creation because of volatility in both debt and equity markets. Even then, the year FY 18-19 saw a healthy growth of 15% in total folios largely due to increasing awareness about mutual funds among investors through AMFI’s ‘Mutual Funds Sahi Hai’ campaign.   

Liquid (51%), other ETF (42%) and fund of funds investing overseas (OFoFs) (33%) saw strong growth last fiscal. While the ETF category benefitted from strong investor interest in PSU divestment offerings by the government through CPSE ETF, liquid funds saw increased participation due to volatility in debt markets. On the other hand, though the growth in overseas FoFs folios is high in percentage terms, the industry saw addition of 31,358 new folios last fiscal.

Overall, barring gilt funds and gold ETFs, all categories saw growth last fiscal. 

Experts attribute slowdown in gold ETFs to introduction of sovereign gold bond fund and relative stagnancy in gold prices.

On gilt funds, they said that the expectations of tighter monetary policy and QE tightening by developed economies led to lower interest in gilt category. However, AMFI CEO NS Venkatesh believes that with the monetary policy being dovish, gilt funds will offer investors good opportunity to earn capital gains.

Folio Data

Source: SEBI