The volatile market and tight liquidity situation has impacted the return of the equity linked mutual fund schemes in February. Contrary to this, debt oriented mutual funds provided positive returns during the same period, continuing the trend from previous months.
Crisil said in a statement that the Mutual Fund (MF) industry?s average Asset Under Management (AUM) including fund of funds for February dipped by around 1% or Rs.5,500 crore to Rs.5.69 lakh crore. Krishnan Sitaraman, head, Crisil Fund Services said, ?Uncertainty in the equity markets and tight liquidity conditions caused the dip. However, inflows from new fund offers (NFOs) and FMPs (fixed maturity plans) helped curtail the fall to some extent.?
The rating agency said that debt oriented mutual fund indices continued to offer positive returns in February. The highest monthly returns came from the liquid fund index ? Crisil LX which was up by 0.66%. “This was followed by the Crisil STBEX, the debt index serving as benchmark for short-term bond funds and CRISIL Fund-dX, the long-term bond funds index. They provided a return of 0.30% and 0.28% respectively”, the rating agency said.
Crisil said that Reliance Mutual Fund continued to top the asset tally in February with average assets of Rs 93,500 crore, up 11.5% over January. ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund retained the second slot, with average assets of Rs 59,300 crore, up 3.8% and UTI Mutual Fund was at third place with average assets of Rs.52,500 crore, down 7.8% from January.
Only seven asset management companies were able to show AUM growth, with Reliance Mutual Fund (11.5%), Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund (8%) and Lotus India Mutual Fund (8%) being the top three.