Mutual fund folio count rises 12.5 lakh to 4.9 crore in June quarter

New Delhi: Driven by equity folios, mutual fund houses saw a surge of more than 12.5 lakh investor accounts in April-June of the current fiscal, taking the total tally to 4.9 crore.

This is on top of an addition of 59 lakh folios in 2015-16 and 22 lakh in 2014-15. In the last two years, investor accounts increased mainly due to robust contribution from smaller towns.

Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts though one investor can have multiple folios.

According to data from the Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi) on total investor accounts with 43 fund houses, the number of folios rose to 48,924,391 at the end of June quarter from 47,663,024 in March-end, a gain of 12.61 lakh.

Growing participation from retail investors, especially from smaller towns, and huge inflows in equity schemes have helped in lifting the overall folio count, experts said.

The equity category witnessed an addition of over 6 lakh investor folios at 3.66 crore during the quarter ended June 2016.

Mutual funds have reported a net inflow of Rs 9,479 crore in equity schemes during the period under review.

The net inflow is in line with BSE's benchmark Sensex, rising 6.5 percent in the first three months (April-June) this financial year.

Mutual funds are investment vehicles made up of a pool of funds collected from a number of investors. The funds are invested in stocks, bonds and money market instruments, among others.