Equity mutual funds witnessed an addition of nearly 27 lakh investor accounts or folios in the first eight months of the current fiscal, primarily on account of strong retail participation.
This follows an addition of 25 lakh folios for the entire last fiscal, 2014-15. Folios are numbers designated for individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple accounts.
According to Sebi data on investor accounts with 44 fund houses, the number of equity folios jumped to 34,367,673 last month from 31,691,619 at March-end, a gain of 26.76 lakh. April last year saw the first rise in more than four years.
Prior to 2014-15, equity MF sector had seen a continuous closure of folios since March 2009, following the global financial crisis in late 2008. From March 2009, as many as 1.5 crore folios had been closed. The investor base reached its peak of 4.11 crore in March 2009, while it stood at 3.77 crore in March 2008.
Before 2014-15, there was a complete lull in equity inflows as well as generation of new folios, but in the past one year, equity markets have come back to life and yielded solid returns.