The number of women fund managers in the mutual fund industry has seen a quantum jump in last one year, though the assets managed by them in the industry had slid for the first time in last six years.

Of the overall 428 fund managers employed by the mutual fund industry, women accounted for less than 10 per cent.

This is despite the industry adding 10 new women fund managers in the year ended January, compared to just two in the same period last year, according to the latest Morningstar India’s Women Fund Managers Report released on Monday.

The number of women fund managers has increased to 42 from 32 last year even as the industry’s fund manager count increased 7 per cent from 399 logged last year.

AUM falls

The quantum of assets managed by women in mutual fund industry fell three per cent to ₹4.43-lakh crore, against ₹4.55-lakh crore, largely due to the resignation of two prominent women fund managers, Swati Kulkarni from UTI Mutual Fund, and Lakshmi Iyer from Kotak MF, who had managed a fair amount of corpus.

As a percentage of the overall assets, AUM managed by women was down 11 per cent as of Janaury-end, against 12 per cent logged last year.

From the perspective of assets managed across various asset classes, women managed ₹1.43-lakh crore of equity asset class, followed by ₹1.29-lakh crore of asset allocation, while fixed income and liquid funds accounted ₹88,335 crore and ₹80,093 crore. Other schemes added up for ₹1,534 crore.

Better performance

In terms of performance, the reports show that of the total open-end assets managed by women fund managers, 82 per cent of the AUM outperformed the peer group average on a one-year basis, 93 per cent of the AUM outperformed on a three-year basis, and 99 per cent of the AUM outperformed on a five-year basis.

The 42 women fund managers were spread across 24 fund houses, with five fund houses having three or more women fund managers; six fund houses had two women fund managers, while 13 had at least one woman fund manager.

Related Topics