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AMFI data shows that the MF industry has added 40 lakh new investors in FY 2023 compared to 1.09 crore in FY 2022, a massive decline of 63% in just one year.
AMFI data shows that the total number of investor count increased from 3.37 crore in March 2022 to 3.77 crore in March 2023.
Experts attribute this to the new KYC norms, which did away with scanned copies of KYC documents. Currently, investors have to submit KYC documents with wet signature. Also, if they use Aadhaar, they need to ensure that the QR copy is machine readable.
Another reason was underperformance of mutual funds. Vinod Jain of Jain Investment said, “Over the last one year, mutual funds have not performed well across scheme categories. In fact, FDs have delivered better than mutual fund returns.”
On the positive side, if we look at long term data of six years, the MF industry has added 2.50 crore new investors since March 2017. The investor count (unique PAN and PEKRN i.e. PAN Exempt Investor Category) thus jumped by over 200x from 1.20 crore as on March 2017 to 3.77 crore as on March 2023.
Commenting on the long-term surge, Jimmy Patel, MD & CEO, Quantum MF said, “AMFI launched the Mutual Fund Sahi Hai Campaign in FY 2016-17 and since then people started noticing mutual funds.”
Sharing his views, Ajaykumar Gupta, CBO, Trust MF added, “The rise in count is attributed to increasing awareness and digitization. Also, good performance over the last five years has attracted many individuals to mutual funds.
