Local mutual fund houses are back with a big bang as far as growth in their assets under management (AUM) is concerned in CY2012. They have emerged better placed by not only outpacing the foreign players (which have been growing assets faster during past two years) but also surpassed the overall industry's asset growth rate during the year.
This once again suggests the comfort which country's investors have with local names than foreign brands, say industry observers.
Be it the Indian dominated banks-sponsored joint ventures (JV) or Indian institutions sponsored fund houses - UTI and LIC MF, or for that matter pure private local players; all have shown rise in their assets in the year.
At a time when industry's asset grew 15.4% from Rs 6.81 lakh crore to Rs 7.86 crore in 2012, assets of local players rose 16.7%. However, foreign players could manage a meagre growth of 5.5%, way below industry's average.
| Rs (crore) | Dec-11 | Dec-12 | Growth % |
| Indian | 6,00,536 | 7,00,927 | 16.71 |
| Foreign | 81,172 | 85,617 | 5.47 |
| Industry | 6,81,708 | 7,86,544 | 15.37 |
| Source: Amfi |
For instance, IDBI MF and UTI MF, put together, managed a growth of over 20% in assets while SBI MF, Canara Robeco MF, Union KBC MF and Bank of India Axa MF, reported a rise of a massive 30% in their collective assets.
On the other hand, several foreign MFs saw erosion in their assets which include ING MF, Daiwa MF, BNP Paribas MF and Pramerica MF. Foreign funds which did better than their peers were JP Morgan AMC, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, among others. It must be noted that during the year two foreign funds got merged with the domestic houses - L&T MF acquired Fidelity's Indian assets while AXA joined hands with Bank of India after their local partner Bharti moved out from the JV.
The year which saw benchmark stock indices giving absolute returns of over 25%, fund industry could not pull in retail investors in the equity segment. However, income fund and Gilt Funds did remarkably well.
According to the statistics available from industry body Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi), during April-December period of FY13, a whopping Rs 69,853 crore of fresh money flowed into the income category which in the year-ago corresponding period stood in the negative territory of Rs 5,421 crore.
Similarly, Gilt Funds (which primarily invest in government securities) saw interest building up throughout the year as inflows in the category touched their several years high during the December quarter. This lead overall inflows in Gilts to reach beyond Rs 2,500 crore against a net outflow of Rs 506 crore during the previous corresponding period.
