The mutual fund industry has ended 2021 with a major milestone.
Over 3 crore unique PAN holders have invested in mutual funds so far. AMFI data shows that the unique investor count has jumped 43% to touch the 3 crore-mark in December, shows latest AMFI data.
Almost 1 crore new investors have joined the mutual fund bandwagon in 2021. The unique investor count has increased from 2.1 crore in December 2020 to 3.01 crore in December 2021. If we include PAN exempt KYC (PEKRN) data, the investor count rises further to 3.06 crore.
The biggest surge in investor count happened in December as mutual funds on-boarded over 22 lakh new investors. The increment in investor count last month was more than twice the average additions seen in previous months.
Green bars denote new unique investor additions (in lakh) | Yellow line lists the unique investor count at the end of each month (in crore)
The number of unique investors is the total PAN cards registered with mutual funds.
The folio addition data also presents a similar story. The industry added almost 30 lakh new folios every month in the second half of 2021, taking the folio count to 12 crore at the end of December 2021 from 9.4 crore at the end of December 2020.
Red bars list the folio count at the end of each month (in crore)
Senior industry executives attribute the growth to digitisation, ongoing market rally, jump in SIP drives and new product launches.
"The penetration is going up due to digitisation. This along with the rally in the equity market is the key factor behind the growth," said Swarup Mohanty, CEO of Mirae Asset MF.
"A lot of factors are responsible for the impressive growth. New launches, SIP drives, TINA ('there is no alternative' as returns from traditional instruments are not that impressive) were some of the reasons that worked in favour of the industry," said a senior executive of a top AMC.
