Investors complaints against MFs rise by 40% to 17,569 in FY17

India's mutual fund bigwigs recorded nearly 17,569 complaints from investors in the fiscal year 2017, witnessing an increase of 40 per cent in the complaints from the preceding fiscal. The increase in complaints are said to be mainly driven by by a rise in folio numbers and investor accounts.

Most of the complaints concern data corrections in investor details and non-updation of changes in investor information such as address, PAN (Permanent Account Number) details, nomination, and alike. In addition, the filing of illegal data by the investors as well as errors made by the investors while filling up the application form further raised the number of grievances.    

According to the data of Association of Mutual Funds of India (Amfi), the top five mutual fund houses including ICICI Prudential MF, HDFC MF, Reliance MF, Birla Sunlife MF and SBI MF received an aggregate of 17,569 investor grievances in FY17 against 12,579 complaints in 2015-16, while the folios rose to 2.72 crore from 2.23 crore during the same period.

SBI MF witnessed the steepest rise in investor grievances in FY17, with complaints increasing four-fold to 6,924, followed by Birla Sunlife MF, with a 51 per cent rise in complaints to 1,831 and ICICI Prudential MF rising two per cent to 4,648. However, HDFC MF witnessed 24 per cent drop in the number of grievances at 2,857, while Reliance MF saw a decline of 10 per cent to 1,309. The market overseer SEBI had first taken notice of the rising number of investor grievances in the year 2011.