HDFC and ICICI Pru MF top in equity assets via direct route

The MF industry gets over 19% of its equity assets through direct plan.

Data available with 40 fund houses shows that the MF industry's total equity assets stood at Rs 9.80 lakh crore as on March 2020. Of this, nearly 19% or Rs 1.90 lakh crore has come through the direct route. The remaining 81% or 7.90 lakh crore has come from the regular plan.

Equity assets include AUM of pure equity funds, ELSS and balanced funds.

Among fund houses, HDFC MF has the highest AUM in direct plan of its equity schemes. The fund house has Rs 28,528 crore direct AUM in its equity schemes, which is around 20% of its Rs 1.4 lakh crore equity AUM.

Next in the list is ICICI Prudential MF with Rs 28,511 crore in direct equity AUM, which is 21.5% of its Rs 1.3 lakh crore equity AUM.

Five other fund houses - SBI, Kotak, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Axis and Nippon - also garner over Rs 10,000 crore of equity assets via the direct channel.

Further analysis shows that Quantum MF has the highest dependency on direct plans in equity schemes. While the fund house’s total equity AUM stood at Rs 737 crore, nearly 96% or Rs 704 crore came via the direct channel.

Next in this list is PPFAS MF. While equity AUM of the fund house stood at Rs 2,608 crore, nearly 70% or Rs 1,833 crore has come via the direct channel. Similarly, IIFL gets 42% of its equity AUM through the direct channel and Motilal Oswal MF accumulates nearly 38% of its equity AUM through the direct route.

Further analysis shows that Mahindra MF at 1.9% depends the least on direct channel to accumulate assets in equity funds. Rathin Lahiri, Chief Business Development Officer, Mahindra MF, said, "Manulife’s recent strategic partnership with Mahindra MF will aim to scale up significantly on innovative products, risk management and digital distribution.

Overall, there are 10 fund houses that get less than 10% of their total equity assets through the direct channel.

AUM in Rs crore