Debt MF’s invest your money in Commercial papers, NCD’s, CD’s and other market securities. It is like someone investing in Fixed instruments/FD on behalf of you. By definition debt MF’s are designed to provide regular income generation in a relatively more stable manner as compared to equity-oriented funds when you choose correct MF’s fitting your Risk Profile
Debt MF’s are tax efficient as compared to bank FD’s. When held over 3 years or more they have indexation benefits. The overall tax that you would pay for the debt MF will be less than the bank FD’s.The returns in Debt Mf’s can be much higher than the bank FD when chosen correctly.
Unlike Equity MF’s debt MF’s are complex and there are about 16 categories of Debt MF’s of varying themes, maturity duration and risks The, returns offered by the debt MF’s vary mainly depending on type & duration of Mutual funds
You may notice out of the sixteen debt fund categories, only Corporate Bond & Credit Risk Funds have a mandate on credit rating [Quality of MF investments]. In corporate bond funds, more than 80 per cent of the portfolio has to be invested in securities rated AA+ / AAA & for credit risk funds, 65 per cent or more has to be in less quality papers i.e rated AA and below. All other debt fund categories, it is open to what is mentioned in the AMC scheme documents , namely Scheme Information Document (SID) and the AMC fund manager’s decision.
Debt Mutual funds are subjected to multiple risks such as Credit ,Interest & on few occasions Liquidity Risks.Any default or change in in the underlying investment rating affects the performance of the MF. Change in Repo rates by RBI [typically once in a quarter] impacts the MF returns.At times due to abnormal outflow in a MF leads to Liquidity crisis ( Recent Franklin issue) as the AMC will find it difficult to sell the underlying low rated papers.
Many of the ratings on popular sites tend to give more importance to the past performance & less value to the underlying quality of investments.These ratings are very generic & it is important to choose a mutual fund that fits your Goals, Risk profile & Investment duration.Choosing solely based on past Performance & Ratings may not be a wise decision in a long run
If you are interested to know suitability of a debt MF to your investment portfolio or require in depth review of your portfolio or require any services of a Financial Advisor to do feel free to contact us @
www.nawanidhi.com | nawanidhif@gmail.com or info@nawanidhi.com
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