Zurich Amc To Unveil 3 New Schemes This Year

Zurich Asset Management Company (India) Pvt Ltd is planning to launch three schemes - an index fund, a monthly income plan and a leadership fund, during the current year.

S V Prasad, president of Zurich, said the AMC intends to introduce innovative products. The leadership fund, as the name suggests, will invest in companies which are leaders in their respective sectors. The index fund will track both the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty indices.

On the fund's investment strategy, especially in equities, Prasad said fund managers across all schemes were required to invest within a list of 150 identified scrips. However, there was always the flexibility to add or delete scrips to and from the list, of course with specific reasons.

Zurich AMC, which won the CNBC India-BNP Paribas' best mutual fund of the year award for 2001, has seen an impressive jump in its assets under management (AUM) in the last one year and the last one month. For instance, between December 2000 and December 2001, the AUM increased by over 133 per cent to Rs 2074 crore from Rs 889 crore. Between last December and January-end this year, the assets have risen to Rs 2297 crore an increase of nearly 11 per cent.

Most of the increase can be attributed to inflows in its debt funds which saw assets grow by a phenomenal 2223 per cent last year, while as of January-end, AUM of these schemes stood at Rs 1175 crore. While assets of equity schemes saw a dip last year, they rose by 15.8 per cent between December 2001 and January 2002, to Rs 250 crore.