The Securities and Exchanges Board of India (Sebi) is looking to cut by half the number of active mutual funds in India, Mint reported on Monday. The move is expected to make it easier for customers who are now faced with a choice of over 2,000 funds managed by 42 fund houses.
According to the website of the Association of Mutual Funds of India (AMFI), there are over 11,000 different mutual fund schemes that currently manage a non-zero sum of money in India (most of these schemes are not currently available for investment—Sebi estimates there are about 2,000 active funds, which it intends to bring down by half). These 11,000 funds together managed nearly Rs20 trillion in the April-June 2017 quarter, AMFI data shows.
The assets under management (AUM) in these 11,000 schemes are distributed in a highly unequal fashion. India’s No. 1 mutual fund scheme by AUM in the April-June time period, the SBI-ETF Nifty 50, managed Rs18,800 crore—accounting for nearly 1% of funds held across all mutual fund schemes in India