The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has tightened the disclosure norms for mutual funds. Apart from a change in format, Sebi has mandated that funds publish their half-yearly results within one month from the end of the half-year.
It has also made it compulsory for funds to publish half-yearly results for the second half of the year. Earlier, mutual funds had the option of publishing either half-yearly results for the second half or the full annual report within 2 months of the close of the year.
The proposed revised format gives meaningful information to the investors about the performance and operations of mutual funds including yields during the last half-year, one-year, 3-years and 5-years and since launch of the scheme.
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The Sebi board, however, has decided that the publication of scheme-wise annual report or an abridged annual report in the newspapers will not be required now.
However, the mutual funds would continue to be required to send the annual report or abridged annual report to all unitholders.
Further, the mutual funds would also have to display their scheme-wise annual report on their websites. These websites would also be linked with the Association of Mutual Funds of India website so that the investors and analysts can access the annual reports of all mutual funds at one place.
In the larger interest of investors, the board has decided to give collective investment schemes a further period of one year to comply with the regulatory requirements.
Entities running collective investment schemes (CIS) which had been granted provisional registration were required to fulfill certain conditions within a period of one year.
Not meeting with these condition would have rendered these entities ineligible for permanent registration and consequently, they would have to wind up the schemes.