NEW DELHI: Driven by addition in equity fund folios, mutual fund houses have registered a surge of close to 2 lakh investor accounts or folios in the first seven months of the current fiscal year (2014-15).

The addition comes after fund houses lost about 33 lakh investor accounts in the entire last fiscal year. Folios are numbers designated to individual investor accounts, though one investor can have multiple folios.

According to data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on total investor accounts with 45 fund houses, the number of folios rose to 3.97 crore at the end of October 31, 2014 from 3.95 crore in the last fiscal (2013-14) - a gain of 1.97 lakh.

Giving the reason for such rise in retail folios, industry officials said the growth is mainly due to addition in equity folios, which was supported by sharp rally in the stock markets.

Besides, the fund houses have clocked 1.55 lakh crore net inflows in various schemes during April-October period, which helped the industry grow its folio count.

The Sensex surged by around 25 percent during the period under review on hopes of economic reforms by the new government. The equity category saw an addition of more than seven lakh folios to 2.99 crore investors at the end of October 31, 2014. The segment saw first rise in folios in the month of April after reporting a consistent decline in investors account in last four years.

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