SEBI urged mutual fund houses to consolidate similar schemes and reduce the clutter that a prospective investor would have to cut through before picking a scheme, the securities market regulator told heads of mutual funds at a meeting here on Wednesday.
The meeting was the first that UK Sinha held with the fund industry after receiving a one-year extension to his tenure as Chairman of SEBI. Today, an investor is faced with a choice of over 8,000 MF schemes when he chooses to start an investment, ER Ashok, CEO of MF robo advisory Scripbox, said.
DHFL-Deutsche Bank deal
The regulator wants fund houses to make the universe of schemes smaller by merging plans of similar categories, such as creating a single large-cap equity fund.
Recently, when DHFL Pramerica Asset Managers acquired Deutsche Bank’s Indian mutual fund assets, SEBI insisted that similar schemes be merged before the acquisition went through.
The meeting with SEBI was attended by board members of industry body AMFI and select fund houses.
SEBI also asked fund houses to explore how the industry could leverage technology and the digital medium to increase the investor base and bring down the AMC’s cost of operations, a CEO of a leading fund house told BusinessLine.
