Mutual Funds: New Regulations by SEBI
Recently SEBI has announced some new regulations for mutual funds. According to the experts, the changes will more useful to AMCs and distributors, rather than investors. After analysing all the announcement of SEBI, the major decisions are as under, let's see effect of each change on AMCs, Distributors and Investors.
Increase in Expense Ratio: SEBI has proposed to increase the Expense ratio by 30 basis points (0.3%) if the mutual funds are able to increase their reach to smaller towns in India and increase their contribution to 30% . The big effect, is that now there will be higher expense ratio for everyone. So inflow from smaller cities will affect investors from bigger cities. Investors from big cities will have to bear the burden of increased expense ratio.
No Internal Limits in Expense Ratio: A very big change which goes in favor of AMCs is the removal of internal limits on the expense ratio and for what it can be used. Earlier there was a limit on the AMC to charge up to 2.5% expense ratio (up to 100 crores AUM), but it was allowed to charge only 1.25% as Fund Management Charge and 0.5% as distribution charges. The rest was taken as their profits. So earlier suppose a Mutual Fund charged 2.25% as the expense ratio, then they compulsorily had to allocate 1.25% as Fund Management Charge and 0.5% for distribution.
But now, that sum limit has been removed and mutual funds are allowed to allocate expenses the way they want. This means you can now see more advertisements, more commissions to the distributors and more aggressive selling. While this is a very big change which will make AMCs happy, they will still have to keep a check on the expense ratio because of competition from other AMCs.
Exit Load is Back: When a investor got out of a mutual funds , he was charged an exit load if he quit before 1 year. That money was not transferred back to mutual fund, nor was it the profit of the mutual fund. It was actually transferred to a separate fund, which was used for sales, distribution and marketing. But now, when a investors exits prematurely, the entire exit load money will be credited back to the scheme account and will not be treated as AMC profit. However an equal amount (capped at 20 basis points) can be included in expense ratio back to compensate the AMC loss due to outgoing investors, which means that overall, for the investors on one hand, the AUM gets increased (NAV increased marginally because of exit load money coming back to them), while at the same time they’re paying more in expense ratios, so the net effect of this would be, no gain no loss to both the parties.
Direct Plans with Lower Expense Ratio: SEBI has directed that for each mutual fund, there has to be a equivalent Direct Plan with a lower expense ratio. So for every mutual fund XYZ, now you will see XYZ and XYZ-Direct options. So XYZ will come with higher expense ratio, and XYZ-Direct will have lower expense ratio. Many people who research mutual funds and like to buy it on their own directly from AMC by passing agents and other online distributors, this option will be cheaper and makes sense. However, many distributors are not happy with this move and think this will “kill” their business, all because investors will then just invest into the direct options.
Investors have to bear Service Tax: SEBI has ruled that service tax that has thus far been borne by the AMCs can now be passed through to the investors. Basically, this is how it is done in all other industries. Anybody who has received an invoice for a service will be familiar with the “Service tax extra” caveat to the quoted amount. AMCs provide a service (fund management service) to investors and will rightfully start charging the investors the requisite amount. This charge, however, is apparently likely to be 2-3 bps (according to the press release). My thought is that this 2-3 bps is more likely to be the blended overall impact across schemes. For equity schemes, it is likely to be higher, more in the 7-8 bps range for big funds and 10-12 bps range for smaller funds (service tax is charged on the amount that an AMC gets to keep from the expense ratio, so it will differ from AMC to AMC and scheme to scheme).
Seperation between Financial Advisors and Distributors: There will be some minimum qualification, registration and guidelines for financial advisers. They will have to register with SEBI and a separate body of regulators will soon be created for this. A financial advisor is a professional who advises his clients on investments for a “fee.” The important distinction being, he wont be able to earn any money from commissions by selling financial products. If a person wants to sell financial products and earn commissions out of it, then he will not be able to “advise” the clients. But CA, MBA, and several other professionals are kept out of this rule and even mutual fund agents who have a valid ARN code are kept out of this rule because their basic advice is seen as the extention of their work. There is still more clarity required on this, so don’t conclude anything yet.
From Jago Investor
