How Safe Is Online Investing?

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The month of July 2018 happens to be the 50th consecutive month when the domestic mutual fund industry has witnessed a rise in the number of folios. It has increased from 4.76 crore at the end of FY16 to 7.55 crore at the end of July 2018, increasing at a CAGR of little more than 20 per cent. The folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts and, therefore, one investor can have multiple accounts. It roughly indicates the number of investors investing in mutual fund schemes.

Over the last few years, mutual funds have proved to be a lowcost and transparent way of channelising savings towards financial investments. The credit for such increase in the participation of retail investors goes to the continuous investor awareness programmes (IAP) by fund houses and the regulatory and industry bodies (SEBI and AMFI). These programmes helped enhance awareness about investments in mutual fund schemes, which in turn, is driving this growth. (Your favourite magazine, Dalal Street Investment Journal has also been doing IAPs since 2010 along with various fund houses with a vision of ‘Democratizing Wealth Creation’)