Reliance Mutual Fund regains top AUM slot

Bucks industry downtrend as assets grow 10 per cent.

The stock market volatility and redemption from liquid funds eroded the asset values of most mutual fund houses in March. But Reliance Mutual Fund bucked the trend and grew 10 per cent to become the country's top fund house, toppling ICICI Prudential MF.

The Anil Ambani-controlled asset management firm received huge fund inflows in its fixed maturity plans (FMPs) in the final weeks of 2006-07.

Besides Reliance, the only other fund to register gain was Quantum MF. The small-sized fund house grew 12 per cent to Rs 60.42 crore from Rs 53.80 crore a month ago, as per data released by the Association of the Mutual Funds.

Reliance MF now leads assets under management with a total AUM of Rs 46,306.77 crore for March. The asset value of the fund house grew 9.7 per cent during the month from Rs 42,209.76 crore in February. ICICI Prudential, which had regained the top position two months back, saw its AUM eroding by 12.5 per cent to Rs 37,869.58 crore from Rs 43, 280.67 crore.

Vikrant Gugnani, president, Reliance MF, said the fund house has been focusing on retail growth for the last one year with special focus on customers who have never invested in MFs.

"We found FMPs a good product for such class. Out of our corpus, nearly Rs 18,000 crore (around 38 per cent) has come from FMPs. Besides, we are also focussing on Systematic Investment Plans for equity schemes, which helped us significantly during the month."

ICICI Prudential, which recently changed its name from Prudential ICICI, had witnessed a robust 25 per cent growth in February, as it garnered around Rs 10,000 crore from liquid funds towards the month-end to topple Reliance MF from the number one position. However, Reliance had maintained its top position by average AUM.

UTI MF maintained its third position with Rs 35,582.65 crore, even though its AUM fell by 7.82 per cent from Rs 38,602.99 crore.

The total AUM of the industry dipped to Rs 2, 95,286.94 crore though the figure is not strictly comparable as the AUM of HDFC MF was not available.