Mutual fund industry asset base rises by Rs two-trillion in 2012

Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company CEO A Balasubramanian said: "In 2012, the mutual fund witnessed growth in fixed income schemes. Within fixed income schemes, actively managed duration focused funds got inflows.

"In other words, debt funds attracted inflows due to stable to benign interest rate regime. Overnight rates more or less remained above the Repo rate. As a result of this, most of the fixed income schemes including money market mutual fund schemes generated higher returns than Bank fixed deposit return," he added.

Inflows in income and liquid funds have contributed the most to the industry's rising AUM. With inflows of Rs 89,302 crore, money market funds AUM surged to Rs 1.77 lakh crore. A similar trend was seen in liquid funds, where inflows rose to Rs 80,880 crore taking the assets managed by the fund to Rs 3.87 lakh crore.

Similarly, equity funds' AUM rose to Rs 1.65 lakh crore despite registering outflows of more than Rs 9,300 crore. AUM of equity linked savings scheme too increased to Rs 25,027 crore though it saw investors pull out over Rs 1,400 crore this year. Interestingly, equity fund managers of mutual fund industry has betted big on banking space with investments worth more than Rs 42,000 investment, which was 20.59 per cent of the industry's total equity assets under management.

Diversified large cap focused equity funds did well during the year, but few sectors such as private sector banks, MNC companies in the space of FMCG and select pharma have delivered substantially higher than even the index.

Gilt funds saw a rise in assets to Rs 5,426 crore due to inflows of Rs 1,567 crore this year as investors interest in the category has risen in recent months.

... contd.

ALSO READ

BlackBerry Messenger-WhatsApp manipulation: Sebi eyes crackdown

Q4 results, IIP data to drive markets this week: Experts

Market review: BSE Sensex ends higher for 3rd consecutive week, up 289 pts

BSE Sensex declines 160 points on RBI's 'hawkish' policy stance