While allowing mutual funds to charge a fresh transaction fee from investors, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India has also asked them to bring about more transparency in their dealings with investors and agents.
The regulator, at its board meeting on Thursday evening, agreed to the MFs' long-pending demand to incentivise agents for losses suffered due to the abolition of entry charge on investors.
It also allowed them to manage and advise pooled assets such as offshore funds and pension funds, provided there was no conflict of interest due to the differential fee structure.
However, Sebi asked the MFs to bring in greater transparency in the information given by them to investors through advertisements and other modes and also conduct thorough due diligence on their distributors or agents.
In their advertisements, MFs would be required to provide 'point-to-point return' for a standard investment of Rs 10,000 and also make other performance-related disclosures.
"Besides, the scheme performance will have to be disclosed against Sensex or Nifty or government of India debt paper in addition to scheme benchmark.
"Performance of fund managers across all schemes
Sebi also took its first steps toward regulating the MF distributors and agents.
The due diligence will be initially applicable for large distributors and would be implemented for others later.
It also asked MFs to disclose the commissions paid to distributors and said that mutual fund industry body AMFI would disclose the aggregate amount of commissions paid to such distributors by the MF industry.
Sebi also asked all the operations of a mutual fund to be located in India.
"All the operations of a mutual fund, including trading desks, unit holder servicing and investment operations, shall be based in India," Sebi said.
It has asked fund houses to bring onshore all their operations within one year. This period is extendable by another one year at Sebi's discretion.
In another investor-friendly move, Sebi said that investors would get one common account statement for all their investments across various mutual funds and these would have to mention the transaction charge paid to the distributor.
Sebi has also asked MFs to give a more granular disclosure of their Assets Under Management figures, giving a break-up of debt/equity/balanced and also geography-wise disclosures.
