Over two lakh sign up for SIPs in June & July

After dabbling in stocks with abandon, and a few burnt fingers later, the average Indian investor is now wider, and more mature. With the markets remaining volatile in the past six months, swinging with global developments, investors have taken refuge under mutual funds (MFs). More and more investors are signing up for systematic investment plans (SIPs) of MFs, rather than investing in equities directly.

Indian MFs have seen more than 2 lakh new SIP accounts being opened with different fund houses in the last two months.

This month, Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund (BSLMF) registered over 50,000 SIP investors, while UTI Mutual Fund (UTI MF) saw over 60,000 SIP investors joining it in June. Reliance Mutual Fund registered over 90,000 SIP investors last month, while ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund opened over 36,000 SIP accounts in June-July.

SIPs are plans where an investor can put in a specific amount of funds every month. This also helps him even out his costs in volatile times. Anil Kumar, CEO, BSLMF, said, "Compared to January, our SIP accounts have risen 10 times in the current month. We have registered 50,000 new investors in SIP only in July. We can attribute this growth to the uncertainty in the equity market and increasing investor awareness about mutal funds."

The surge in SIPs is also significant since most other investment avenues are giving low to negative returns in these volatile times. Pankaj Gupta, fund manager, SBI Mutual Fund, said, "It is really difficult for an investor to foresee a bottom when he is directly investing in equities. However, a SIP route makes sense now."

Some dealers say in the past two months, there has been a big rise in SIP accounts, due to a series of SIP-linked insurance schemes. In the last two months Reliance MF, BSLMF and UTI MF have introduced SIP +Term insurance plans, which are the flavour of the season, they say.