Birla Sun Life MF eyes Rs 6,000 cr equity assets next fiscal

Company has moved up in pecking order to seven from No 8 as far as equity assets concerned

Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund aims to touch around Rs 6,000 crore of equity assets in the next financial year, an increase of 40% from the current level, in its bid to raise the overall pie of this segment, a company official has said.

With Rs 90,000 crore of average assets under management (AUM), Birla Sun Life is the fourth largest fund house with an equity asset of Rs 4,300 crore as of now. This makes it the seventh largest MF in terms of equity base.

"We have seen net inflows of around Rs 600 crore in equities from April till date...We want to cross $1 billion -mark (Rs 6,000 cr) under this asset base by the next fiscal," Birla Sun Life MF Chief Executive A Balasubramanian told PTI.

The company has moved up in pecking order to seven from No 8 as far as equity assets is concerned, he said.

Equity asset base of the MF industry constituted only around 20% of their total AUMs of Rs 9.16 trillion as of end February with the rest coming in from the debt segment.

As markets rally and hover around all-time high levels, MFs are gearing up efforts to ramp up their equity asset base as they expect retail investors, who have exited stocks over the past five years due to lacklustre performance, to come back to the market space.

Referring to the steps taken up by Birla Sun Life to expand asset base, Balasubramanian said, "we are stepping up our efforts with more distribution engagement...Our focus is also to increase penetration in B-15 markets."

He said the private MF house is looking at increasing equity investor base by turning the inactive folios into active ones. The fund house is opening zero account folios of investors who can invest in MF schemes in future.