New Delhi: Mutual funds have lost an estimated over 15 lakh investors, measured in terms of individual accounts or folios, in the first six months of the current fiscal, mainly due to profit-booking and various merger schemes.
According to SEBI data on total investor accounts with 44 fund houses, the number of folios fell to around 4.13 crore at the end of September 30, 2013 from 4.28 crore in the last fiscal (2012-13).
Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, although one investor can have multiple folios.
Market participants attributed the sharp fall in number of folios to profit-booking and various merger schemes in the mutual fund industry, among other reasons.
During April-September 2013-14, the number of investor folios in equity schemes fell by over 20 lakh. The total number of folios in equity funds stood at 3.11 crore as of September 30, 2013.
The mutual fund industry has been facing consistent equity folio closures during the past few months.
Recently, SEBI Chairman U.K. Sinha had also raised concerns over the continuous decline in folios in recent months.
The decline in equity folios during the first six months of the current fiscal is coincided with an increase of 2.88 per cent in the BSE benchmark index Sensex.
According to SEBI data, the total number of folios in debt funds rose by about 3.82 lakh to 65 lakh at the end of September 30, 2013.
Besides, exchange traded funds lost over 41,758 folios to nearly seven lakh investor accounts at the end of September this year.
Balanced schemes, which invest in the equity and debt category, gained 1.4 lakh folios to end at 27 lakh at the end of September.
