LIC Mutual Fund looks to take AUM to ₹25,000 cr by March
MUMBAI: LIC Mutual Fund, which is heavily dependent on debt schemes with over 90% of its schemes in that segment, hopes to double its recently launched equity fund to ₹2,000 crore by the end of December and close the fiscal year with a cumulative AUM of ₹25,000 crore, adding a quarter more to the present asset base.
Having begun operations in 1989, LIC AMC is one of the oldest fund houses but has been a passive player all this while keeping the parent LIC’s riskaverse investing culture.
As a result, its AUM is only a low ₹20,000 crore (as of October-end and is ranked 20th among 43 players) because more than 90% of its schemes and over 70% of its AUM are debt funds, even after so many years of operations and despite the strong parental brand support.
It started launching equity schemes only in the past five-six years which now constitutes around 30% of the ₹20,000 crore AUM.
But the fund house is not shifting this mix going forward as it continues to believe in not taking too much risk, Dinesh Pangtey, the chief executive of LIC Mutual Fund, told PTI.
The fund house late last month launched a new equity fund -- balanced advantage fund -- after many years of not launching any new schemes, which had closed on November 3 gathering around ₹1,040 crore from over 51,630 customers -over 84% of them or ₹872 crore retail investors, he said, adding most investors are from the B-30 cities (small towns).
“We would like to grow on debt but do not want to take high risks, as we are risk-averse. Having said that, given the massive retail participation in the recent equity fund launch, we would like to launch more retail products going forward with a focus on G-secs which even today form the largest chunk of our assets,” Dinesh Pangtey explained.