Driven by addition in equity fund folios, mutual fund houses have registered a surge of more than seven lakh investor accounts in the first nine months of the current fiscal.

The addition comes after fund houses lost about 33 lakh investor accounts in the entire last fiscal year.

Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple folios.

According to the Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI) data on total investor accounts with 45 fund houses, the number of folios rose to 4.03 crore at the end of December 31, 2014 from 3.95 crore in the last fiscal (2013-14) — a gain of 7.28 lakh.

Of 4.03 crore folios, retail investors accounted for 3.86 crore folios, followed by HNI accounts (13.22 lakh) and institutional investors (3.34 lakh).

Industry officials say the rise in retail folios is mainly due to addition in the equity segment, which was supported by a sharp rally in the stock markets.

“Increased participation by retail investors in equities has undoubtedly led to increase in folio numbers. The industry’s focus on investor awareness seems to have contributed to further growth, in terms of new investors coming in,” HSBC Global Asset Management India CEO Puneet Chaddha said.

“The key contributing factors seem to be an uptick in sentiments and expectations of an investor-friendly and reform-oriented government delivering on policy changes,” he added.

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