Birla Sun lines up PMS variants

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund has sought the Securities and Exchange Board of India's (Sebi) approval for introducing three new variants of portfolio management service (PMS).

S V Prasad, chief executive officer, said the variants will have a minimum price ticket of Rs 50 lakh. " In case of investors coming in with Rs 50 crore and more, the company will design different 'theme' for them," he said.

Explaining the higher ticket for the products in PMS category, he said the fund's philosophy was not to encourage all to invest in the segment. "For that matter, the fund will introduce the variants in select cities and ask a few distributors to sell them." he added.

However, the PMS is the only segment where the fund wants the big-ticket investors to chip in money. Otherwise, it puts a lot of emphasis in the retail sector where it sees great opportunity.

The fund has started offering value-added services in order to woo more retail investors.

"The number of retail investors putting in their funds is more important to us than the size the asset under management," he said.

The mutual fund will soon introduce hand over of ready made cheques to the investors in the time of investments in all debt schemes.

Under the scheme, an investor will be given a cheque worth 75 per cent of his investment when he brings in the money. Once he encash the cheque, his holding will be automatically redeemed. The balance amount will be sent through couriers.

Prasad added that the fund would also introduce a product that would take away a fixed portion of an investor's monthly income and invest it in Birla Cash Plus, an open ended high liquidity fund investing in short term debt and money market instruments.

The investors would benefit as returns in the Birla Cash Plus was higher than what a saving bank account offered. Plus, the investor would later chalk out a systematic investment plan by diverting the money from the Birla Cash Plan.

"To begin with, we plan to offer the product to the employees of the company. Later, the product will be offered in other companies," he said.