Every son and daughter will be able to participate, says SEBI chief on Rs 250 SIP

Sebi chairperson Madhabi Puri also unveiled a Tarun Nivesh scheme at the event, aimed to provide investor education to the youth, and promote a culture of saving.

Capital market regulator Sebi and mutual fund body AMFI formally unveiled the small SIP at an event in Mumbai on February 21, in a collaboration aimed to democratise mutual fund savings and increase the penetration of Systematic Investment Plan.

Speaking at the launch, Sebi's Chairperson Madhabi Buch said through sachetisation, investing as an opportunity will be available at every nook and corner. "Every son and daughter will be able to participate in the industry," Madhabi Puri added.

Regarding concerns on the implementation of the small SIP scheme, Buch reassured that the program has been designed in a very sensitive manner. "They have been designed to be a long time product, and I am sure that is how the industry will adopt it," Madhabi Puri said.

Just days ago, SBI Mutual Fund had launched 'JanNivesh SIP' scheme to offer micro systematic investment plans (SIPs) starting from Rs 250. Sebi Chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch called the programme one of her 'fondest dreams'.

On January 22, Sebi, through a consultation paper to encourage distributors to promote low-cost SIP, suggesting a Rs 500 incentive for educating first-time investors in mutual funds. For micro-SIPs, economic viability has been cited as a factor of concerns, given high operational costs. Madhabi Puri added that there is no plan to make the Rs 250 SIP mandatory for every investor, and capital market regulator's involvement to push the project was to ensure the product turns profitable, and breaks even in 2-3 years.

AMFI also launched Tarun Yojana on February 21, which aims to provide investors education to the youth. This is designed to enhance education for the youth and promote a culture of saving.

"When we think about investor education, when we think about responsible investing, we don't just want people to come into the market and do just speculative activity. The idea is that there should be a systematically available opportunity which is easily accessible and then through that experience you have the learning.
The idea was that this Tarun Yojana should be such that the children in their own name, the families in their children's name should learn about this product by actually experiencing it and by actually feeling it with their own two hands," she explained. Through the programme, nearly Rs 20,000 crore will finally end up going into the hands of so many different children over the next 10 years and that is something that is truly great real experiential learning that we hope for," she said. Under the programme, mutual fund players will provide incentives to students to begin their investing journey.

The regulator, in association with AMFI also launched MITRA (Mutual Fund Investment Tracing and Retrieval Assistant) to help identify inactive and lost mutual fund holdings.

Also Read: Over Rs 500 crore unclaimed investor assets with stock brokers

This initiative will help investors trace their inactive mutual fund folios, or those funds in which no investor has initiated transaction/s (financial and non-financial) for 10 years but has unit balance available. The regulator is also hoping that platform will encourage investors to do the Know Your Customer (KYC) process and reduce the non-KYC compliance folios and that it will reduce the number of unclaimed folios.

Speaking at the even Buch also lauded the work being done by AMFI, she noted that as a mature industry body it was showing what other industry bodies can do.  "Today what amfi is , is the aspiration for every industry association in the country. It has brought maturity in the process of cocreation," she added.  She also lauded other intitiatives such as the launch of clearing corporation for the repo transactions in corporate bonds. and the backstop facility fund.

Buch also addressed concerns on regulation of distributors. She reiterated that they consider distributors akin to employees of AMC and that it is the job of AMCs to regulate distributors in case of any wrong doings. "Mutual fund distributors are the agent of the AMCs.  It is just one step removed from being an employee of the AMCs. So therefore, as far as we are concerned, if there is any wrongdoing by a mutual fund distributor, we will hold the AMC accountable and responsible. Now it is up to them to control their distributors for doing right, wrong, etc," she said. In terms of the evolution of supervision, she noted that Sebi was looking at off-site database supervision but added that they will not take action against it.

Addressing concerns on proliferation of thematic schemes, Buch noted that in order to address this issue of number of thematics funds, they had conducted a consultation paper to analyze the issue instead of just capping the number of thematic funds. "We do not want to take a surface-level approach—merely suppressing symptoms without addressing the underlying causes. We welcome insights from industry participants and stakeholders. We understood the NFO-related problem and took corrective action. Similarly, we are open to further guidance. We are eager to address any additional root causes," she said.