MF industry adds 60 lakh new investors in 2022

The Rs.40 lakh crore MF industry has added over 60 lakh new investors in 2022. AMFI data shows that the industry has a total of 3.66 crore investors in December 2022 as against 3.06 crore investors in December 2021, an addition of 60.55 lakh new investors in one year. 

While the industry has recorded growth of 20% in terms of new investor registration last year, the pace of growth declined substantially compared to the calendar year 2021. The industry had added over 90 lakh new investors during 2021. 

Experts attribute this decline to a host of reasons like no NFOs for three months during FY 2022, market volatility and discontinuation of pooled account.

An MD and CEO of a top fund house said that the decline in new investor registration is due to discontinuation of NFOs during April and June. He further said that investors interest in mutual funds has been somewhat waning due to uncertainty around economic environment.

Another reason is discontinuation of pooled account. It has affected online and large distributors and as a result, the addition of new customers for quite some time, said another MF official. 

The change in KYC norms has also affected the pace of growth for the MF industry. In fact, the industry added just 2.93 lakh new investors in December and 80,000 new investors in November, which was much lower than the average monthly addition of close to 4 lakh in 2021.

Overall, the total investor count with PAN reached 3.62 crore by the end of December 2022.  If we include 4.28 lakh PAN exempt KYC (PEKRN) investors, the investor count rises further to 3.66 crore.