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The high pace of new investor addition in 2021 was not a short-term phenomenon. In the first seven months of 2022, the mutual fund industry has another added 50 lakh new investors, registering a growth of 16%.
As a result, the total unique investor count touched 3.50 crore by the end of July 2022. If we include PAN exempt KYC (PEKRN) data, the investor count rises further to 3.54 crore.
Particulars |
July-22 |
December-2021 |
Increase |
% increase |
Unique PAN |
3,50,24,810 |
3,01,31,278 |
48,93,532 |
16 |
Unique PEKRN |
4,59,001 |
4,68,906 |
-9,905 |
-2 |
Total |
3,54,83,811 |
3,06,00,184 |
48,83,627 |
16 |
Going by the current trend, the industry is likely to add 1 crore new investors this year too after doing so for the first time in 2021.
The continuing 'fast pace' penetration implies that new investor addition in 2021 was not just driven by the strong market rally. New investors coming in at the same pace in 2022, when the market has been volatile, shows that investors are coming in for the long-term.
Industry executives and MFDs & RIAs believe that investors now understand that equity funds are the best way to generate wealth if they invest for the long term with discipline and patience.
"The message of return generation through discipline and patience has reached out to investors well. They now prefer to start their investment journey through mutual funds over direct equity," said Mumbai MFD Viral Bhatt of Money Mantra.
"The popularity of mutual funds is increasing owing to the industry’s collective efforts to educate investors. Also, many MFDs have promoted SIP as a reasonably safe, convenient and transparent way to create long term wealth, which has undoubtedly generated a lot of interest among investors," said G Pradeepkumar, CEO, Union MF.