Coronavirus: MFs ask Sebi for more time in meeting debt scheme norms

Among other challenges, the industry is anticipating delays in publishing daily net asset values (NAVs) or dispatching physical cheques for redemption and dividend payments

The mutual fund (MF) industry has sought certain exemptions from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) pertaining to compliance requirements for order executions following government’s work-from-home directive, meeting sectoral exposure norms in debt schemes amid liquidity crunch, and consider increasing borrowing limits as redemptions could spike amid Coronavirus scare.

The industry has also informed the regulator that in the prevailing environment where MFs as well as registrar and transfer agents (RTAs) are impacted from lower staff strength, it may not be possible to accept physical transactions from investors. As an alternative, MFs and RTAs will accept transaction requests from