Investors are increasingly investing through direct schemes of mutual funds. SEBI Chairman U K Sinha pointed out at the 9th CII Mutual Fund Summit that investments in direct schemes in both equity and non-equity schemes is showing an increasing trend.
"The percentage of money coming from direct investments is showing an upward trend. For the industry as a whole, it has gone up from 12% in December 2012 to 28% as on 31st May 2013. It has gone up for equity schemes too from 7% to 9% but the larger change has happened in the non-equity schemes from 13% to 34%. Investors are now trying to find out who is adding value and who is giving them better advice. There is a message for all the stakeholders including distributors."
AMFI files application for SRO with SEBI
Meanwhile, the SEBI Board also decided that the cut-off date for accepting applications for Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) will be 31st July 2013. H N Sinor, CEO, AMFI said that AMFI has christened the proposed SRO as Institute of Mutual Fund Financial Intermediaries (IMFI). AMFI has already applied for a registration with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) and it has already filed an application with SEBI.
Learn from other businesses: SEBI Chairman
The SEBI Chairman, U K
Sinha urged the MF industry to draw inspiration from other industries like
telecom to increase their penetration. "NPS corpus has crossed Rs 30,000
crore from 2005 whereas the mutual fund industry has built a corpus of only Rs
1.80 lakh crore in equity funds in spite of being around for 50 years of
existence. Look at the telecom industry. How has it grown today and where is
the mutual fund industry today. The percentage of retail investors’
contribution in mutual fund assets is going down. In 2011 it was 28% and
in 2012 it was 27% and in 2013 it is 23%. The number of folios is also
going down. The more worrying thing is that retail equity folios are
falling continuously over the last five quarters."
