There are more than 40 mutual fund houses (AMC) in India and every investor has his own favorite mutual fund house to pick. We hear about best mutual funds on various websites, hoardings and even look at their performance on valueresearchonline and then choose them for lumpsum investment or starting our SIP.
But on what parameters do you choose these mutual fund houses (not mutual fund) ? Will you pick Birla Sunlife or DSP BlackRock ? Will you choose HDFC or SBI mutual funds? Will you pick Quantum Mutual funds or PPFAS ? Or will it be Reliance Mutual Funds or ICICI Prudential ?
In this article I want to talk about 4 parameters which were discussed by a Financial Planner – Dinesh Jain in one of the articles comments section. I am expanding them for the benefit of readers.
3 questions to ask before choosing a great fund house
1. Is asset management the core competency and passion for fund house or just another business ?
One of the things, you can look at is – “Is Asset management just another business for the fund house to make money ?”, Or is it also their passion and core competency? Will they close down the business or sell it to some other AMC, just because the revenues are down ? What kind of message do you get when you look at the fund house advertisements or their videos on internet? Take an example of Birla Sunlife mutual funds and Quantum mutual funds, do you see any difference in the way they operate or communicate ? Which fund house do you feel is more focused on asset management ? Or look at DSP BlackRock Mutual fund and Reliance mutual fund , do you get a different kind of feel in both or same ?
The first level filtering of this parameters will clean out some fund houses from your mutual fund shopping list. Note that its up-to you to decide which fund houses you think do not pass this test. You have to do your own study on this.
2. Does Fund house focus on Quality or Quantity of funds ?
The second important parameter to look at how many funds an AMC launches and for what reasons? Now, I am not saying that the fund house should not launch new funds, but do they do it, because of the demand and opportunities in market or just to cash on the market sentiments and mood ?
There are so many fund houses, who came up with new and useless NFO’s during stock market boom, just to cash on the market sentiments and named their funds in such a fancy manner that gives a feeling that the fund is so awesome ! , but when the market was bad, and they could not handle so many funds, they merged them with their other better performing funds.
So some fund houses are really an ASSET MANAGEMENT COMPANY and some are kind of ASSET GATHERING COMPANIES which just want to launch funds and their focus is on increasing the AUM, so more charges can come to them and increase their profitability. Nothing wrong in making more profits or thinking about it, but at what cost is it done is the question? Now its up to you to decide if you want to avoid these kind of fund houses or go with them.
3. How transparent and Honest is Fund House
One of the parameters you can look at is the transparency and honesty of the fund house. Look at their website, and see what kind of disclosures they have made? Do they do what they say ! , or both are different things ? Do they do their investor education program just to sell their products and schemes or genuinely they want to help investors ?
Conclusion
Picking a right mutual fund is important, but you should also do some background check on the parent fund house also before you pick your funds. Note that these 4 parameters are just for reference and it might happen that for someone these parameters does not make sense.
Can you please share what parameter you think is important one !