Driven by addition in equity fund folios, mutual fund (MF) houses have registered a surge of nearly 44 lakh investor accounts in the first eight months of the current fiscal, taking the total tally to 5.2 crore -- a record.
This is on top of an additional 59 lakh folios in 2015-16 and 22 lakh in 2014-15. In the last two years, investor accounts increased following robust contribution from smaller towns.
Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts though one investor can have multiple ones.
According to the data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) on total investor accounts with 43 active fund houses, the number of folios rose to a record 5,20,49,348 at the end of last month, from 4,76,63,024 in March-end, a gain of of 43.86 lakh.
Growing participation from retail investors, especially from smaller towns, and huge inflows in equity schemes have contributed to the upside, experts said.
The equity category saw an addition of over 31 lakh investor folios to 4.2 crore in April-November of the current fiscal.
Mutual funds have reported a net inflow of over Rs 40,700 crore in equity schemes in the first eight months of the current fiscal. Overall, funds have seen an infusion of Rs 3.03 lakh crore.
The inflow is in line with the Sensex surging over five per cent during the period under review.
Mutual funds are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a large number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.
Similarly, Edelweiss AMC had also closed the fund flow
in one of its schemes a few months back. However, it reopened the fund a few months later.
"I personally believe all mid and small cap funds should focus on performance. The moment you cross a certain size where you can't improve the performance, its better to close it at that point of time," Gupta said.
