Retail investors' avg ticket size declines to Rs 68,321 in FY23

NEW DELHI: Mutual funds as an investment vehicle have gained popularity among investors, although the average ticket size of retail investors have dropped by close to 3 per cent to Rs 68,321 in March this year.

The retail investors had an average account size of Rs 70,199 as of March 2022 as compared to average account size of Rs 68,321 at the end of March this year, according to data published by Association of Mutual Funds in India (Amfi).

On the other hand, institutional investors had the highest ticket size at Rs 10.11 crore per account during the period under review.

In terms of schemes, the average ticket size is relatively higher for liquid and debt oriented schemes, which are primarily dominated by institutional investors.

The average ticket size for debt oriented schemes was Rs 14.53 lakh, while the same for equity oriented funds was Rs 1.54 lakh.

Generally, equity assets have a longer average holding period as compared to non-equity assets with 45 per cent of equity assets having been held for more than two years. Retail investors hold a 56.5 per cent of equity assets for over two years.

Also, there has been a consistent increase in investor accounts over the past few years due to increasing awareness about mutual funds, ease of transactions through digitisation and sharp surge in equity markets.

The 42-player mutual fund industry added 1.62 crore folios in the financial year 2022-23. Since December 2014, there has been a steady increase in investor accounts from 4.03 crore to 12.95 crore in March 2022 to finally 14.57 crore in March 2023. Of the 14.57 investors' accounts in the mutual fund industry, a total of 13.28 crore or 91.1 per cent is accounted for retail investors, followed by High Net-worth Individuals (1.19 crore) and institutional investor (9.82 lakh). Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts. An investor can have multiple folios.

Mutual funds inflow in financial year 2022-23 rose around 7 per cent to Rs 40.05 lakh crore as against Rs 37.70 lakh crore in the previous fiscal.

Of the total asset under management (AUM), retail AUM across equity, hybrid and solution-oriented schemes stood at Rs 20.34 lakh crore and the average AUM rose to Rs 20.45 lakh crore.

Going by the data, the contribution of small towns or B30 cities to mutual fund industry's assets under management of over Rs 40 lakh crore stood at 17 per cent as of March-end. Moreover, B30 (beyond top 30 cities) tend towards equity assets with 79 per cent of the assets from these locations were in equity schemes.

For top-30 cities, equity-oriented schemes accounted for 46 per cent of assets in March this year.