Mutual Funds See Huge Churn As Market Leadership Shifts Yet Again

The mutual fund industry saw a decline in assets under management for the month of March. The overall tight liquidity situation at the end of the financial year led to large scale withdrawal from liquid schemes even as rising interest rates attracted inflows into fixed maturity plans.
Total assets, excluding fund of funds, managed by the industry declined substantially by Rs26,980 crore to Rs326,329 crore as at the end of March from Rs353,309 crore as of end February 2007. The industry had Rs231,045 crore in assets under management as of March 2006. Reliance Mutual Fund reclaimed the market leadership with a Rs4,091 increase in assets over the previous month. In fact, Reliance is the only large fund house to achieve an increase in assets during March. The fund house saw substantial inflows into its fixed maturity plans during the month.

Reliance had lost out the top position in term of month-end assets to ICICI Prudential during the previous month, but was ahead of its competitor in terms of average assets for the month of February.

ICICI Prudential, till last month knows as Prudential ICICI, had seen a sharp jump in assets during February, mostly from inflows into liquid schemes. Higher demand for funds by corporate investors and other large investors during the financial year-end led to an equally sharp erosion in March. The fund house saw a decline of Rs5,411 crore during the month and slipped to second position behind Reliance.

UTI MF held on to its third place, though its assets under management declined by Rs4,115 crore. The fund house, which was the biggest fund manager for many years, has clearly lagged its two large private sector competitors in recent months.