BSE allows 20 fund houses to offer MF units to RIAs

Leading stock exchange BSE has authorised as many as 20 asset management companies to offer mutual fund units to registered investment advisors (RIA).

The 20 fund houses enabled by the exchange for RIAs include Axis Mutual Fund, Birla Sun Life AMC, DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund, Edelweiss AMC, HDFC Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential AMC and IDBI Asset Management.

The other AMCs are part of IDFC, Indiabulls, India Infoline, Invesco, Kotak Mahindra, L&T, LIC MF, Motilal Oswal, Peerless, PPFAS, Reliance Nippon, Tata and UTI.

As per latest Sebi data, there are 46 registered mutual funds in the country.

In order to broaden the reach of the mutual fund platform, RIAs have been recently allowed to use infrastructure of the recognised stock exchanges to purchase and redeem mutual fund units directly from mutual fund/assets management companies on behalf of their clients, including direct plans.

The facility, on the BSE's platform for mutual funds, had become operational from November 4.

The exchange will not charge either membership or one-time processing and annual fee.

Sebi, in October 2013, had allowed MF distributors to deal using the stock exchange mechanism.

Prior to that, only brokers were allowed to utilise the exchange mechanism for redeeming and purchasing of mutual fund units.

Star MF is the largest MF distributor platform in India with more than 4 lakh SIPs (Systematic Investment Plans) per month.

On many occasions, the platform has exceeded 1 lakh orders per day.