The Indian mutual fund industry has thousands of schemes but only a few hundred fund managers.
To understand the number of schemes a fund manager manages, we browsed through the websites of the top ten fund houses. In addition, Value Research has helped us with the data of ICICI Prudential MF and Franklin Templeton MF. We found that across the top 10 fund houses 143 fund managers manage 380 opened end schemes.
Simply put, on an average, a fund manager manages three open ended equity or debt schemes. Open-ended equity funds include pure equity funds, balanced funds, ELSS, and ETFs.
We have exempted close end equity funds and FMPs as these schemes do not require frequent monitoring.
Experts are of the opinion that ideally fund managers should not manage more than two funds if the mandates are different. Dhirendra Kumar, CEO, Value Research believes that fund managers can manage multiple schemes only if the mandate are similar across schemes. “It does not matter if the fund manager is managing two schemes or 20 schemes as long as the nature of the fund and the strategy is similar. However, in my view, a fund manager should not manage schemes with different mandates subsequently. For instance, a fund manager managing a large cap fund should avoid managing small or micro cap funds as mandates of the both the schemes do not go hand in hand,” says Dhirendra Kumar, CEO of Value Research.
Swarup Mohanty, CEO, Mirae Asset Mutual Fund seconds Dhirendra’s view. “If funds follow a similar mandates, for example a fund manager managing a large cap fund can manage a multi cap fund. Such fund managers can manage up to four funds. However, if mandates of the funds are different then a fund manager should not manage more than two schemes,” says Swarup.
Among the top ten fund houses, HDFC Mutual Fund and Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund maintain the highest average in terms of equity funds. A fund manager of the both the fund houses manages close to four equity schemes.
Similarly, the largest fund house, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund followed HDFC Mutual Fund and Kotak Mutual Fund with an average of 2.5 equity schemes and 2.6 debt funds.
In terms of debt funds, fund manager of HDFC MF manage six schemes and fund manager of UTI manage five funds.
SBI Mutual Fund maintains the lowest average number of open-ended equity-oriented schemes managed by a fund manager. The seven-member equity team manages 12 schemes, which turns out to be an average of 1.18 schemes per fund manager.
It is difficult to say that managing multiple schemes can deter the performance of a fund manager but every fund manager has a bandwidth. It is difficult to track too many stocks and manage multiple schemes.
Open-ended schemes managed by top ten mutual funds
Fund House |
Equity fund managers |
Equity funds |
Average schemes managed by equity fund manager |
Debt fund managers |
Debt funds |
Average schemes managed by debt fund manager |
ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund |
12 |
30 |
2.5 |
9 |
24 |
2.6 |
HDFC Mutual Fund |
7 |
27 |
3.8 |
3 |
18 |
6 |
Reliance Mutual Fund |
9 |
24 |
2.6 |
4 |
15 |
3.7 |
Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund |
11 |
29 |
2.6 |
6 |
19
|
3.2 |
SBI Mutual Fund |
16 |
19 |
1.18 |
9 |
12 |
1.3 |
UTI Mutual Fund |
8 |
24 |
3 |
3 |
15 |
5 |
Kotak Mahindra Mutual Fund |
5 |
19 |
3.8 |
3 |
18 |
6 |
Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund |
8 |
15 |
1.8 |
6 |
17 |
2.8 |
DSP Blackrock Mutual Fund |
7 |
16 |
2.2 |
6 |
14 |
2.3 |
IDFC Mutual Fund |
7 |
12 |
1.7 |
5 |
10 |
2 |