MF industry adds 300,000 investor accounts in Feb; total tally at 88.8 mn

The mutual fund industry has added over 300,000 investor accounts in February, taking the total folio tally to 88.8 million, which suggests investors' understanding about market risks associated with such schemes. However, the pace of growth in folio numbers dropped in February compared to the preceding two months.

In January, the industry added 1.4 million folios and in December, the number was over 600,000. Mutual fund houses added just 260,000 investor accounts in November. Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts. An investor can have multiple folios.

According to data from Association of Mutual Funds in India, the number of folios with 44 fund houses rose to 8,88,36,162at the end of February, from 8,85,33,153 in the end of January, registering a gain of 303,000 folios.

This comes at a time even as broader market witnessed heavy volatility amid concerns over the impact of coronavirus pandemic. Industry experts said the addition of folios suggests investors' understanding of the market risks associated in the mutual fund schemes.

Number of folios under the equity and equity-linked saving schemes rose by 685,000 to 61.8 million in February-end as compared to 6.13 crore at the end of the preceding month. Notably, investment in equity mutual funds rose to an 11-month high of Rs 10,730 crore in February.

However, the number of folio count in debt oriented schemes dropped by 600,000 to 6.188 million at February-end from 6.788 million at January-end.

Within the debt category, liquid funds continued to top the chart in terms of number of folios at nearly 1.8 million, followed by low duration fund at 991,000.

Overall, mutual fund schemes witnessed an outflow ofRs 1,985 crorelast month across all segments, mainly owing to withdrawal from liquid or money market segments. The outflow has pulled down the asset base of the mutual fund sector to Rs 27.23 trillion at February-end fromRs 27.86 trillion at the end of January.