Sebi considering to create new asset class

Capital markets regulator Sebi is looking to create a new asset class — which lies between mutual funds and portfolio management services (PMS) — and the new product can cater to high-risk investors, its chief Madhabi Puri Buch said on Friday.The Sebi chief said that there is a spectrum of asset classes for investors. Of these, “mutual funds are the highly retail investors, then you have in between a PMS and then you have AIF (alternative investment fund) for private equity”.

“We feel there is room for an additional asset class somewhere between mutual funds and PMS… Sebi is looking into a whole new asset class,” Buch told reporters here at the sidelines of a CII event.

In May, Sebi floated a consultation paper and proposed a uniform total expense ratio across mutual fund schemes in a bid to bring in transparency in the costs charged to unitholders.TER is a percentage of a scheme’s corpus that a mutual fund house charges towards expenses, including administrative and management.