Working

Of
Mutual Fund
Sidhantha suchit
Mutual Funds

Before we understand what is mutual fund, it’s very important to know the area in
which mutual funds works, the basic understanding of stocks and bonds.

Stocks : Stocks represent shares of ownership in a public company. Examples of public

companies include Reliance, ONGC and Infosys. Stocks are considered to be the most
common owned investment traded on the market.

Bonds : Bonds are basically the money which you lend to the government or a company, and
in return you can receive interest on your invested amount, which is back over predetermined
amounts of time. Bonds are considered to be the most common lending investment traded on
the market. There are many other types of investments other than stocks and bonds (including
annuities, real estate, and precious metals), but the majority of mutual funds invest in stocks
and/or bonds.

What Is Mutual Fund

A mutual fund is just the connecting bridge or a financial intermediary that allows a
group of investors to pool their money together with a predetermined investment objective.
The mutual fund will have a fund manager who is responsible for investing the gathered
money into specific securities (stocks or bonds). When you invest in a mutual fund, you are
buying units or portions of the mutual fund and thus on investing becomes a shareholder or
unit holder of the fund.

Mutual funds are considered as one of the best available investments as compare to
others they are very cost efficient and also easy to invest in, thus by pooling money together in
a mutual fund, investors can purchase stocks or bonds with much lower trading costs than if
they tried to do it on their own. But the biggest advantage to mutual funds is diversification,
by minimizing risk & maximizing returns.

Thus a Mutual Fund is the most suitable investment for the common man as it offers an
opportunity to invest in a diversified, professionally managed basket of securities at a
relatively low cost. The flow chart below describes broadly the working of a mutual fund
Overview of existing schemes existed in mutual fund category
 Wide variety of Mutual Fund Schemes exists to cater to the needs such as financial
position, risk tolerance and return expectations etc. The table below gives an overview into the
existing types of schemes in the Industry.
Type of Mutual Fund Schemes

BY STRUCTURE

Open Ended Schemes

An open-end fund is one that is available for subscription all through the year. These do not
have a fixed maturity. Investors can conveniently buy and sell units at Net Asset Value
("NAV") related prices. The key feature of open-end schemes is liquidity.

Close Ended Schemes

A closed-end fund has a stipulated maturity period which generally ranging from 3 to
15 years. The fund is open for subscription only during a specified period. Investors can invest
in the scheme at the time of the initial public issue and thereafter they can buy or sell the units
of the scheme on the stock exchanges where they are listed. In order to provide an exit route to
the investors, some close-ended funds give an option of selling back the units to the Mutual
Fund through periodic repurchase at NAV related prices. SEBI Regulations stipulate that at
least one of the two exit routes is provided to the investor.

Interval Schemes

Interval Schemes are that scheme, which combines the features of open-ended and
close-ended schemes. The units may be traded on the stock exchange or may be open for sale
or redemption during pre-determined intervals at NAV related prices.

BY NATURE
Under this the mutual fund is categorized on the basis of Investment Objective. By nature the
mutual fund is categorized as follow:
1. Equity fund:

These funds invest a maximum part of their corpus into equities holdings. The structure of
the fund may vary different for different schemes and the fund manager’s outlook on different
stocks. The Equity Funds are sub-classified depending upon their investment objective, as
follows:

• Diversified Equity Funds

• Mid-Cap Funds
• Sector Specific Funds
• Tax Savings Funds (ELSS)

Equity investments are meant for a longer time horizon, thus Equity funds rank high on the
risk-return matrix.

2. Debt funds:

The objective of these Funds is to invest in debt papers. Government authorities, private
companies, banks and financial institutions are some of the major issuers of debt papers. By
investing in debt instruments, these funds ensure low risk and provide stable income to the
investors. Debt funds are further classified as:

• Gilt Funds: Invest their corpus in securities issued by Government, popularly known
as Government of India debt papers. These Funds carry zero Default risk but are
associated with Interest Rate risk. These schemes are safer as they invest in papers
backed by Government.

• Income Funds: Invest a major portion into various debt instruments such as bonds,
corporate debentures and Government securities.

• MIPs: Invests maximum of their total corpus in debt instruments while they take
minimum exposure in equities. It gets benefit of both equity and debt market. These
scheme ranks slightly high on the risk-return matrix when compared with other debt
schemes.

• Short Term Plans (STPs): Meant for investment horizon for three to six months.
These funds primarily invest in short term papers like Certificate of Deposits (CDs)
and Commercial Papers (CPs). Some portion of the corpus is also invested in corporate
debentures.

• Liquid Funds: Also known as Money Market Schemes, These funds provides easy
liquidity and preservation of capital. These schemes invest in short-term instruments
like Treasury Bills, inter-bank call money market, CPs and CDs. These funds are
meant for short-term cash management of corporate houses and are meant for an
investment horizon of 1day to 3 months. These schemes rank low on risk-return matrix
and are considered to be the safest amongst all categories of mutual funds.
3. Balanced funds: As the name suggest they, are a mix of both equity and debt funds. They
invest in both equities and fixed income securities, which are in line with pre-defined
investment objective of the scheme. These schemes aim to provide investors with the best of
both the worlds. Equity part provides growth and the debt part provides stability in returns.

Further the mutual funds can be broadly classified on the basis of investment parameter
viz,
Each category of funds is backed by an investment philosophy, which is pre-defined in the
objectives of the fund. The investor can align his own investment needs with the funds
objective and invest accordingly.

BY INVESTMENT OBJECTIVE

• Growth Schemes: Growth Schemes are also known as equity schemes. The aim of
these schemes is to provide capital appreciation over medium to long term. These
schemes normally invest a major part of their fund in equities and are willing to bear
short-term decline in value for possible future appreciation.
 • Income Schemes: Income Schemes are also known as debt schemes. The aim of these
schemes is to provide regular and steady income to investors. These schemes generally
invest in fixed income securities such as bonds and corporate debentures. Capital
appreciation in such schemes may be limited.

• Balanced Schemes: Balanced Schemes aim to provide both growth and income by
periodically distributing a part of the income and capital gains they earn. These
schemes invest in both shares and fixed income securities, in the proportion indicated
in their offer documents (normally 50:50).

• Money Market Schemes: Money Market Schemes aim to provide easy liquidity,
preservation of capital and moderate income. These schemes generally invest in safer,
short-term instruments, such as treasury bills, certificates of deposit, commercial paper
and inter-bank call money.

OTHER SCHEMES

• Tax Saving Schemes: Tax-saving schemes offer tax rebates to the investors under tax
laws prescribed from time to time. Under Sec.88 of the Income Tax Act, contributions
made to any Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS) are eligible for rebate.
• Index Schemes: Index schemes attempt to replicate the performance of a particular
index such as the BSE Sensex or the NSE 50. The portfolio of these schemes will
consist of only those stocks that constitute the index. The percentage of each stock to
the total holding will be identical to the stocks index weightage. And hence, the returns
from such schemes would be more or less equivalent to those of the Index.
• Sector Specific Schemes: These are the funds/schemes which invest in the securities
of only those sectors or industries as specified in the offer documents. e.g.
Pharmaceuticals, Software, Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Petroleum stocks,
etc. The returns in these funds are dependent on the performance of the respective
sectors/industries. While these funds may give higher returns, they are more risky
compared to diversified funds. Investors need to keep a watch on the performance of
those sectors/industries and must exit at an appropriate time.
Types of returns:

There are three ways, where the total returns provided by mutual funds can be enjoyed by
investors:
• Income is earned from dividends on stocks and interest on bonds. A fund pays out
nearly all income it receives over the year to fund owners in the form of a distribution.
• If the fund sells securities that have increased in price, the fund has a capital gain.
Most funds also pass on these gains to investors in a distribution.
• If fund holdings increase in price but are not sold by the fund manager, the fund's
shares increase in price. You can then sell your mutual fund shares for a profit. Funds
will also usually give you a choice either to receive a check for distributions or to
reinvest the earnings and get more shares.

Pros & cons of investing in mutual funds:

For investments in mutual fund, one must keep in mind about the Pros and cons of
investments in mutual fund.

Advantages of Investing Mutual Funds:

1. Professional Management - The basic advantage of funds is that, they are professional
managed, by well qualified professional. Investors purchase funds because they do not have
the time or the expertise to manage their own portfolio. A mutual fund is considered to be
relatively less expensive way to make and monitor their investments.

2. Diversification - Purchasing units in a mutual fund instead of buying individual stocks or

bonds, the investors risk is spread out and minimized up to certain extent. The idea behind
diversification is to invest in a large number of assets so that a loss in any particular
investment is minimized by gains in others.

3. Economies of Scale - Mutual fund buy and sell large amounts of securities at a time, thus
help to reducing transaction costs, and help to bring down the average cost of the unit for their
investors.
4. Liquidity - Just like an individual stock, mutual fund also allows investors to liquidate
their holdings as and when they want.
5. Simplicity - Investments in mutual fund is considered to be easy, compare to other available
instruments in the market, and the minimum investment is small. Most AMC also have
automatic purchase plans whereby as little as Rs. 2000, where SIP start with just Rs.50 per
month basis.

Disadvantages of Investing Mutual Funds:

1. Professional Management- Some funds doesn’t perform in neither the market, as their
management is not dynamic enough to explore the available opportunity in the market, thus
many investors debate over whether or not the so-called professionals are any better than
mutual fund or investor himself, for picking up stocks.

2. Costs – The biggest source of AMC income, is generally from the entry & exit load which
they charge from an investors, at the time of purchase. The mutual fund industries are thus
charging extra cost under layers of jargon.

3. Dilution - Because funds have small holdings across different companies, high returns from
a few investments often don't make much difference on the overall return. Dilution is also the
result of a successful fund getting too big. When money pours into funds that have had strong
success, the manager often has trouble finding a good investment for all the new money.

4. Taxes - when making decisions about your money, fund managers don't consider your
personal tax situation. For example, when a fund manager sells a security, a capital-gain tax is
triggered, which affects how profitable the individual is from the sale. It might have been
more advantageous for the individual to defer the capital gains liability.

Mutual Funds Industry in India

The origin of mutual fund industry in India is with the introduction of the concept of mutual
fund by UTI in the year 1963. Though the growth was slow, but it accelerated from the year
1987 when non-UTI players entered the industry.

In the past decade, Indian mutual fund industry had seen a dramatic improvements, both
quality wise as well as quantity wise. Before, the monopoly of the market had seen an ending
phase, the Assets Under Management (AUM) was Rs. 67bn. The private sector entry to the
fund family rose the AUM to Rs. 470 in in March 1993 and till April 2004, it reached the
height of 1,540 bn.
Putting the AUM of the Indian Mutual Funds Industry into comparison, the total of it is less
than the deposits of SBI alone, constitute less than 11% of the total deposits held by the Indian
banking industry.

The main reason of its poor growth is that the mutual fund industry in India is new in the
country. Large sections of Indian investors are yet to be intellectuated with the concept.
Hence, it is the prime responsibility of all mutual fund companies, to market the product
correctly abreast of selling.

The mutual fund industry can be broadly put into four phases according to the development of
the sector. Each phase is briefly described as under.

First Phase - 1964-87

Unit Trust of India (UTI) was established on 1963 by an Act of Parliament. It was set up by
the Reserve Bank of India and functioned under the Regulatory and administrative control of
the Reserve Bank of India. In 1978 UTI was de-linked from the RBI and the Industrial
Development Bank of India (IDBI) took over the regulatory and administrative control in
place of RBI. The first scheme launched by UTI was Unit Scheme 1964. At the end of 1988
UTI had Rs.6,700 crores of assets under management.

Second Phase - 1987-1993 (Entry of Public Sector Funds)

Entry of non-UTI mutual funds. SBI Mutual Fund was the first followed by Canbank Mutual
Fund (Dec 87), Punjab National Bank Mutual Fund (Aug 89), Indian Bank Mutual Fund (Nov
89), Bank of India (Jun 90), Bank of Baroda Mutual Fund (Oct 92). LIC in 1989 and GIC in
1990. The end of 1993 marked Rs.47,004 as assets under management.

Third Phase - 1993-2003 (Entry of Private Sector Funds)

With the entry of private sector funds in 1993, a new era started in the Indian mutual fund
industry, giving the Indian investors a wider choice of fund families. Also, 1993 was the year
in which the first Mutual Fund Regulations came into being, under which all mutual funds,
except UTI were to be registered and governed. The erstwhile Kothari Pioneer (now merged
with Franklin Templeton) was the first private sector mutual fund registered in July 1993.

The 1993 SEBI (Mutual Fund) Regulations were substituted by a more comprehensive and
revised Mutual Fund Regulations in 1996. The industry now functions under the SEBI
(Mutual Fund) Regulations 1996.

The number of mutual fund houses went on increasing, with many foreign mutual funds
setting up funds in India and also the industry has witnessed several mergers and acquisitions.
As at the end of January 2003, there were 33 mutual funds with total assets of Rs. 1,21,805
crores. The Unit Trust of India with Rs.44,541 crores of assets under management was way
ahead of other mutual funds.

Fourth Phase - since February 2003

This phase had bitter experience for UTI. It was bifurcated into two separate entities. One is
the Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India with AUM of Rs.29,835 crores (as on
January 2003). The Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India, functioning under an
administrator and under the rules framed by Government of India and does not come under the
purview of the Mutual Fund Regulations.

The second is the UTI Mutual Fund Ltd, sponsored by SBI, PNB, BOB and LIC. It is
registered with SEBI and functions under the Mutual Fund Regulations. With the bifurcation
of the erstwhile UTI which had in March 2000 more than Rs.76,000 crores of AUM and with
the setting up of a UTI Mutual Fund, conforming to the SEBI Mutual Fund Regulations, and
with recent mergers taking place among different private sector funds, the mutual fund
industry has entered its current phase of consolidation and growth. As at the end of September,
2004, there were 29 funds, which manage assets of Rs.153108 crores under 421 schemes.

Major Players Of Mutual Funds In India

Period (Last&nbsp1 Week)

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