Equity MFs add 25 lakh investor accounts in Apr-Nov FY17

More than 25 lakh new investor accounts or folios have been added to the equity mutual funds during the first eight months of the current fiscal, primarily on account of strong participation from retail investors.

This is over and above an addition of 43 lakh folios in 2015-16 and 25 lakh in 2014-15. In the past two years, investor accounts increased mainly due to robust contribution from smaller towns.

Folios are numbers designated for individual investor accounts, though an investor can have multiple accounts.

According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) data on investor accounts with 43 active fund houses, the number of equity folios jumped to 38,591,768 at the end of November from 36,025,062 at the end of last fiscal, a gain of 25.66 lakh.

Overall, the industry has witnessed an addition of 44 lakh investors' accounts to reach all-time high level of 5.2 crore. The latest inflow has pushed the assets under management (AUM) of equity mutual funds to Rs 4.68 lakh crore at the end of November from Rs 3.86 lakh crore in March-end.

Growing participation from retail investors and huge inflows in equity schemes have helped in increasing the folio counts, experts said.

"Investors have seen the volatility of this year as a positive to average out costs. Besides, retail investors appear to have become savvier, using liquid schemes to either earn higher returns or to run Systematic Transfer Plan (STPs) into equity funds to average costs," says Srikanth Meenakshi, COO FundsIndia.com, an online investment portal for MFs.

Mutual funds (MFs) have reported net inflows of over Rs 73,000 crore in equity schemes in the first eight months (April-November) of the current fiscal.