SBI Mutual Fund ties up with Andhra Bank

Mutual funds upbeat on growth through tie-ups, new products

SBI Mutual Fund, one of the largest bank sponsored mutual funds in the country, has tied up with Andhra Bank to distribute its products.

Addressing a press conference, P G R Prasad, managing director of SBI Funds Management Private Limited, said: "The tie-up will help us deepen our product penetration especially in the rural areas of the country, thus giving an attractive investment option to the investors."

He said that special training would be given to the staff of Andhra Bank to promote the products. SBI Mutual Fund offers 19 schemes covering low, medium and high risk profiles.

T S Narayanasami, chairman and managing director of Andhra Bank, said that the bank's 1,131 branches would be effectively utilised to distribute the mutual fund products.

"Around 100 officers are already Amfi (Association of Mutual Funds in India) qualified for selling mutual fund products and another 160 have passed the bancassurance exam for selling insurance products," he said.

Andhra Bank's focus on third party distribution has seen it open 16 financial service centres manned by professional marketing teams in major centres exclusively for selling various financial products.

According to Narayanasami, to strike a balance between fee-based and fund-based income and to augment the bank's fee based income, Andhra Bank had strategically tied up with mutual fund companies.

"The bank has fixed a target of Rs 750 crore for the distribution of mutual fund products during the current financial year. We have already sold mutual fund products worth Rs 25 crore for Principal Mutual Fund and have two or three more tie-ups in the pipeline," he said.

"SBI Mutual Fund has launched over 35 schemes, of which 14 have been redeemed, yielding good returns to investors," Prasad said. The fund at present has over Rs 6,000 crore in assets under management.

SBI Mutual Fund is also the first bank fund to launch an offshore fund, the India Magnum Fund with a corpus of around Rs 225 crore.