MFs folio count rises 36 lakh in April-October to record 5.13 crore

Driven by addition in equity fund folios, mutual fund (MF) houses have registered a surge of more than 36 lakh investor accounts in the first seven months of the current financial year (FY), taking the total tally to 5.13 crore.

This is on top of an additional 59 lakh folios in the FY 2015-16 and 22 lakh in the FY 2014-15. In the last two years, investor accounts increased mainly due to robust contribution from smaller towns.

Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple folios.

According to the data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India on total investor accounts with 43 fund houses, the number of folios rose to a record 5,1,287,934 at the end of last month from 4,76,63,024 in March-end, a gain of of 36.25 lakh.

Growing participation from retail investors, especially from smaller towns, and huge inflows in equity schemes have helped in increasing the overall folio counts, experts said.

The equity category witnessed an addition of close to 15 lakh investor folios to 3.8 crore in April-October period of the current FY.

MFs have reported a net inflow of over Rs 31,000 crore in equity schemes in the first half of the current FY. Overall, funds have seen an infusion of Rs 2.67 lakh crore.

The inflow is in line with the Sensex surging 10% 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.