Mutual fund equity folio count rises 20 lakh in first 7 months of this fiscal

New Delhi: Equity mutual funds witnessed an addition of nearly 20 lakh investor accounts or folios in the first seven months of the ongoing fiscal, primarily on account of strong retail participation.

This follows an addition of over 43 lakh folios in the entire 2015-16 and 25 lakh folios 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 the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) data on investor accounts with 43 active fund houses, the number of equity folios jumped to 37,997,044 at the end of October from 36,025,062 at the end of last fiscal, a gain of 19.72 lakh.

Overall, the industry folios rose to an all-time high of 5.13 crore.

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

"Contribution towards monthly SIP (systematic investment plans) lead to higher positive net inflows in equities," Bajaj Capital Group CEO and Director Anil Chopra said.

SIP is an investment vehicle offered by mutual funds to investors, allowing them to invest using small amounts periodically instead of lump sums. The frequency of investment is usually weekly, monthly or quarterly.

Mutual funds have reported net inflows of Rs 31,627 crore in equity schemes in the first seven months (April-October) of the current fiscal.

Inflows are in line with BSE's benchmark Sensex rising over 10 percent during the period under review.

The robust inflow has pushed the assets under management (AUM) of equity mutual fund to a record high of Rs 4.85 lakh crore at the end of October from Rs 4.68 lakh crore in September-end.