Retail investors drive MF growth in 2016  

Mutual fund houses in India witnessed robust growth in 2016, driven by strong participation by retail investors, who added 70 lakh accounts. 

BENGALURU : Mutual fund houses in India witnessed robust growth in 2016, driven by strong participation by retail investors, who added 70 lakh accounts. 

According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the number of folios in the 43 active mutual fund houses stood at 5.28 crore at the end of December 2016, up from 4.58 crore in December 2014. Folio is the number designated to an individual investor account. It is to be noted that one investor can have multiple folios.

Also, the rate at which the number of accounts has grown in 2016 is much higher than that in the previous two years. While 22 lakh accounts were added in 2014, the figure for 2015 stood at 56 lakh.

According to market experts, there were huge inflows of equity schemes which contributed to an increase in the number of investors. Overall, mutual funds have seen an infusion of `2.86 lakh crore, while equity and Equity Linked Savings Scheme saw an inflow of Rs 51,000 crore.

This trend would continue in 2017, said Rajeev Thakkar, chief investment officer at PPFAS Mutual Fund. “More investors are signing up. The trend should broadly continue.

The only risk for this is that equity returns have been subdued in the market. If investors lose faith and confidence, then it could slow down.”
 Hanu Yedluri, CEO of InstaEMI.com, told Express that many mutual fund houses were taking up investor awareness programmes. According to him, there could be more takers, especially youngsters, if there were more online platforms. 

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