The corpus of Prudential ICICI 's Monthly Income Plan (MIP) has grown from Rs 40 crore to Rs 137.56 crore in the last quarter ended September 2001.
However, Pru ICICI phenomenal growth nothwithstanding, Alliance Monthly Income with a corpus of Rs 532 crore continues to be the biggest private sector player in MIP. Other players in this segment are Birla MIP (Rs 72.47 crore), Templeton MIP (Rs 30 crore) and Sun F&C (Rs 48.98).
The state-owned Unit Trust of India (UTI) has been the biggest player in assured monthly income plans. Since 1994, UTI launched as many as 26 MIPs with collective mobilisation in excess of 23,500 crore. Meanwhile, assets under management of Pioneer ITI's MIP was Rs 66.22 crore as of September-end.
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According to Dilip Madgavkar, chief investment officer, Pru ICICI, "There is a huge demand for MIPs and we now have been able to make a good presence in this segment despite adverse market conditions." Prudential ICICI's MIP, an open ended scheme with no assured returns has maintained a consistent dividend of 0.77 per cent in the last eleven months since the scheme was launched.
Moreover, the scheme has declared dividend right from the first month of launch as against other AMCs taking a cooling period of 2-3 months.
Commenting on its investment strategy Sanjay K Garodia, fund manager, said "Our endeavour has been to deliver consistent returns through a conservative approach, hence we never deviated from our strategy." He further said, "Our strategy has been to make consistent returns and hence we maintain a 85 per cent in debt (mainly consists of AAA rated debt instruments) and the exposure in equity varies between 0-15 per cent."
The scheme also offers a unique automatic encashment plan, an tax efficient mechanism. This plan envisages an automatic redemption and payment to the unit-holders.