The capital market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), has once more moved in investor interest in the mutual fund industry. The mutual fund you buy will soon cost less, be less prone to mis-selling and be more transparent. These are the four changes that will make an already investor friendly product go several steps ahead.
One, Sebi has lowered the costs in a mutual fund. An expense ratio in a mutual fund is the cost that the investor pays. The regulator fixes the maximum a fund can charge and leaves it to competition to drive costs down. Levied on the assets under management (AUM), these costs were fixed in 1996 when the industry size was around ₹30,000 crore. Costs in a mutual fund were expected to come down as the size grew because fixed costs do not grow with the size of the AUM. The benefits of larger size, it was assumed, would be passed on to the investor. The industry size is now ₹25 trillion but the costs in the retail part of the market have stayed near the maximum limits; in the institutional part (liquid funds and debt funds), costs have been slashed due to the higher bargaining power of the big customers. Retail customers have no organised voice and continued paying more even as the size of the industry indicated a cost cut. Sebi has now cut the maximum a fund can charge and costs over the board will come down.