More retail participation helps MFs grow in 5th quarter

Growing retail participation for the fifth straight quarter helped mutual funds close 2015 with their highest-ever folio count of 4.59 crore, a growth of 13.84 per cent (or 55.76 lakh folios) over 2014.
Of this, the retail count was 4.37 crore, which is an increase of 13 per cent or 50.69 lakh folios, a Crisil-Amfi release said here today.
The industry added 14.09 lakh (up 3.17 per cent) folios in the December quarter sequentially, or over the September quarter.
Of this, retail accounted for 12.93 lakh folios, which is lower than the 15.11 lakh added in the September quarter, it added.

Equity-oriented funds got the lion's share of retail folios despite market volatility.
Retail folios in the segment were up 13.33 per cent (39.53 lakh folios) at 3.36 crore despite the fact that the market as represented by Nifty 50 closed the year down 4 per cent.

The latest quarter saw a rise of 2.45 per cent (8.04 lakh folios), also marking the fifth consecutive quarter of gains.
More high networth individuals (HNIs), or those investing Rs 5 lakh or more, preferred mutual funds. The HNI segment recorded an absolute rise of nearly 4 lakh folios in 2015 and 0.88 lakh in the December quarter, pushing its total base to 17.21 lakh.

Balanced funds as a category added 4.55 lakh folios (up 24.1 per cent) year-on-year and 1.26 lakh folios (5.7 per cent) quarter-on-quarter to close 2015 at 23.45 lakh folios.
Within balanced funds, retail and HNI folios posted a rise of 1.08 lakh folios and 0.14 lakh folios, respectively, for the quarter, it said.
Debt funds' share of total mutual fund folios looked up a notch to 16.43 per cent compared with 16.06 per cent at the end of September. The category logged the fourth consecutive quarterly rise, adding 3.96 lakh folios to take the tally to 75.33 lakh.
There were 1,764 closures in gold exchange traded funds

during the quarter, though way less than the 8,739 seen in the preceding quarter and 36,712 closures during the whole year. The count at the end of December was 4.51 lakh folios, it said.
Tenure-wise analysis of assets under management (AUM) across investor types and categories showed that 54.58 per cent in gold exchange traded funds of retail AUM stayed in equity mutual funds for more than two years, lower than 56.38 per cent in the preceding quarter and 59.92 per cent a year ago.
Of the Rs 2.22 lakh crore of retail investments in equity-oriented mutual funds, Rs 1.21 lakh crore was held for over 24 months.

In comparison, about 22.4 per cent of HNI AUM stayed invested in equity mutual funds for more than two years, marginally higher than 22 per cent the previous quarter.
Corporates continued to dominate mutual fund AUM with 48 per cent share in the December quarter, up from 47 per cent in September.
HNIs were the second-biggest contributor with 28 per cent share.
The retail segment's share in total mutual fund AUM remained steady at 22 per cent.