Despite Upheaval In MF Sector, Folios Rise In Tandem With Record AUM

Mumbai, June 17: In spite of the debt segment of the mutual fund (MF) industry experiencing severe stress and its resultant impact on the other segments of the sector, the investor participation has increased in the month of May 2019. This is corroborated not only with rise in the MFs’ assets under management (AUM), but also rise in the total number of accounts (or ‘folios’ as per mutual fund parlance).

As on May 31, 2019 the number of Folios stood at 8.32 crore (83.2 million), the Average AUM (AAUM) of the industry for the month of May 2019 stood at Rs 25,43 lakh crore. AUM as on May 31, 2019 has crossed a landmark of Rs 25 Lakh crore and almost touched a new high of Rs 26 Lakh crore, said Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) on its website.

While the number of folios under equity, hybrid and solution-oriented schemes, wherein the maximum investment is from retail segment stood at 7.51 crore (75.1 million). Amfi said, this is 60th consecutive month witnessing rise in the number of folios, in other words, the number of MF investors’ account has seen consistent rise month after month for last five years.

In its analysis on industry AUM for May 2019, CRISIL in its report said, open-ended equity funds continue to garner largest folio share. At the aggregate level (excluding domestic fund of funds) in the open-ended category, equity funds amassed the largest share of folio count at around 70%, followed by hybrid schemes with nearly 12%, as these categories benefit from the largely individual investor base. Within the categories, while equity-oriented funds gained nearly 4 lakh folios in the month, hybrid fund folios saw a decline of over 30,000 folios. Debt funds, despite garnering the largest share of assets, had a folio share of just over 6.26% at the end of May 2019 as the category continues to be dominated by institutional investors.

At the end of FY18 the total number of folios were over 7.14 and it added 1.6 crore folios during that period. The number of folios added in FY 17, were 67 lakhs and in FY16 it added 59 lakh new folios, Amfi said.

Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though an investor can have multiple accounts. Over the last few years, investor accounts have increased following robust contribution from retail investors, especially from smaller towns, and huge inflows in equity schemes.