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Latest AMFI data depicts the faith of investors in equity as the inflows reported a month-on-month rise of 31% to touch a 12-month high in March 2023. The data also highlights the rising participation of retail investors as the monthly SIP contribution crossed the Rs. 14,000 crore mark.
Here are the latest numbers and other key highlights of March 2023.
Fund flows across categories
Equity funds - Overall inflows increased from Rs. 15,686 crore in February 2023 to Rs. 20,534 crore in March 2023, the highest since April 2022.
A category-wise review shows that sectoral/thematic funds received the highest inflows of Rs. 3,929 crore. Dividend yield funds witnessed the next highest flows of Rs. 3,716 crore. And, ELSS, small cap funds and mid cap funds had inflows of over Rs. 2,000 crore each.
A larger part of these inflows came from HDFC MNC Fund, SBI Dividend Yield Fund and Navi ELSS Tax Saver Nifty 50 Index Fund which individually mobilised Rs. 339 crore, Rs. 3,496 crore and Rs. 6 crore.
Other equity funds also reported positive inflows.
Talking about the positive equity inflows, N S Venkatesh, Chief Executive, AMFI, said, “India and its growing investor base, continue to put faith in the equity markets via the mutual fund route.”
He added, “Equity-oriented mutual funds registered a net inflow of over Rs. 200,000 crores in FY 2022-23.”
Debt funds - Debt funds reported an overall outflow of Rs. 56,884 crore. Liquid funds (Rs. 56,924 crore) followed by money market (Rs. 11,422 crore) and ultra short duration funds (Rs. 10,281 crore) witnessed the highest outflows.
However, corporate bond funds, banking and PSU funds and dynamic bond funds reduced the impact of overall outflows to some extent. They reported inflows of Rs. 15,262 crore, Rs. 6,496 crore and Rs. 5,661 crore respectively.
Addressing the ongoing concerns around rising interest rates and the removal of LTCG tax, N S Venkatesh said, “Investors should look at debt funds beyond tax efficiency; these funds also provide investors with real-time liquidity enabling the investor to withdraw money within a day. In the long term, debt fund offers the benefit of interest rate movements. Investors must look at a balanced portfolio with debt funds in their kitty.”
Hybrid funds - Apart from multi asset allocation funds (Rs. 473 crore) and conservative hybrid funds (Rs. 283 crore), all categories reported negative flows. Here, arbitrage funds witnessed maximum outflows of Rs. 12,158 crore.
Overall, hybrid funds had negative flows of Rs. 12,372 crore.
Passive funds - The launch of 12 index funds partially contributed to the overall inflows of Rs. 27,228 crore. These funds collectively mobilised Rs. 566 crore in March 2023.
However, gold and other ETFs reported outflows of Rs. 267 crore and 331 crore, respectively.
Other data points
Industry AUM - The average AUM stood at Rs. 40.05 lakh crore. Of this, retail investors contributed 51% or Rs. 20.46 lakh crore through equity, hybrid and solution-oriented schemes.
Folio count - With a monthly addition of 14.79 lakh folios, the total count increased to 14.57 crore.
SIP - Investors registered 21.66 lakh SIPs in March 2023. The total SIP accounts and AUM stood at 6.36 crore and Rs. 6.83 lakh crore. Also, the monthly SIP flows crossed the Rs. 14,000 crore mark and stood at Rs. 14,276 crore.
Commenting on these figures, N S Venkatesh said, “SIP inflows continue to soar, breaking the record on a month-on-month basis - it would not be an overkill to say that the retail investor is the hero of the markets. The spike in investors witnessed in the post pandemic period, despite the volatility due to global geo-political reasons and inflation, is also a cue to resilient investor behaviour.”
