Birla Sun Life MF joins Rs 1 lakh-cr club

Sector's AUM rose 7% in Sept quarter; HDFC MF continues to lead with Rs 1.41 lakh-crore corpus

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund, the country fourth largest fund house, is the newest entrant in the club of members having at least Rs 1 lakh-crore of corpus under management.

It is the second fund house to do so this year. ICICI Prudential AMC made it to the mark in March.

In the quarter ended September, the former's average of assets under management (AUM) rose to Rs 1.02 lakh-crore, a rise of 4.1 per cent over the earlier quarter. This has pushed Birla Sun Life MF to share the dais with  HDFC MF, ICICI Prudential MF and Reliance MF, which are managing assets of Rs 1.2-1.4 lakh-crore each.

A Balasubramanian, chief executive office of Birla Sun Life MF, told Business Standard,  "This is a proud moment for the fund house. It's an outcome of hard work and efforts of the employees and continuous support from distributors."

He says a focus on consistent performance in both the debt and equity segments had helped. The equity AUM of the fund house is now a little over Rs 20,000 crore, fifth largest in the sector. In March-end, it was Rs 13,000 crore. "The rise is a combination of appreciation in the market and fresh inflows," said Balasubramanian.

However, even as Birla Sun Life grew four per cent, the sector's overall growth was a little over seven per cent. One reason could be higher assets pertaining to fixed maturity plans, hit with a new debt tax structure after the Union Budget in July.

What helped the fund house was higher inflow in the equity segment thus far this financial year. The sector saw nearly Rs 30,000 crore of net inflow here and Balasubramanian said his fund house managed to grab nearly 24 per cent of this, next only to ICICI Prudential AMC, which claimed to have cornered 38 per cent of the equity inflow.

The latest average AUM of the sector is Rs 10.58 lakh-crore , against Rs 9.87 lakh-crore a quarter earlier. HDFC MF has continued to lead the league; its growth was a little below nine per cent. Its average AUM is now Rs 1.41 lakh-crore. ICICI Prudential and Reliance MF both grew 8.1 per cent, to Rs 1.27 lakh-crore and Rs 1.22 lakh-crore, respectively. UTI MF grew its assets by 4.8 per cent but is still way behind from the Rs 1 lakh-crore mark, at Rs 82,250 crore.

The collective assets of the top five players, at Rs 5.77 lakh-crore, are nearly 55 per cent of the sector's overall assets. Further, a majority of the fresh inflows of money are being cornered by the top 10. which also have SBI MF, Franklin Templeton, IDFC MF, DSP BlackRock and Kotak MF.

Of the 43 operational MF entities, only seven saw a fall in assets. These were Baroda Pioneer, IIFL MF, Sahara MF, LIC Nomura, ING MF, Peerless MF and Union KBC.