It is the first anniversary of one of the darkest days in the history of mutual funds in India. Whatever anyone else might say or think, in my eyes, what happened one year ago was a tragedy of such a magnitude that it put not just Franklin Templeton and SEBI, but the whole industry to shame. But where exactly are we, one year on?
When you redeem your investments in a debt fund, you can typically expect the money to be credited to your account the next business day. It’s been one year now and investors in the 6 debt schemes of Franklin Templeton that were shut down are yet to be paid back in full. According to a recent report, depending on which scheme they held, investors have been paid back 7% to 71% of their money. Those numbers are a telling statement of the progress, or lack of it.
More importantly, what lessons have we learned? That’s a question that I would urge every mutual fund investor- whether impacted or not- to think about. While I have no doubt that the primary blame for what happened lies between Franklin Templeton and SEBI, investors can benefit only if they think deeply about what happened, and how the risk in that could have been minimized.
From my side, I can tell you what I learned. With no intention to sound arrogant, my learning has been to somewhat continue with the processes that I was following on my portfolio. There have been three key rules that I used to, and still apply in allocating my money. For those who think it might help, here are the details.
My first key rule (for as long as I can remember) has been to use a specific, qualitative approach to decide which fund houses to entrust my money with. The second key rule has been to select schemes only if I found the risk and expenses to be acceptable. By their very nature, both of these rules call for ongoing monitoring. So it was that until November 2019, while Franklin Templeton made my list, most of its so-called ‘yield-oriented’ schemes didn’t.
That’s when I decided to limit my exposure to only one of those ‘yield-oriented’ funds. I held it until the day it shut down, and I continue to hold it ever since. Truth is, I haven’t regretted that one bit. That’s partly because it was (and is) just the kind of investment I wanted, and I had no need to cash it in. In my opinion, it has been a reasonably well-managed fund and shutting it down was uncalled for and driven by reasons that haven’t been transparently disclosed. In addition, I must add that part of my lack of regret was also because of my third rule- to diversify in whatever way possible: across asset classes, fund houses, schemes, fund managers, and even across registrars. You may think I’m being paranoid, and maybe I am. But I am determined to do what gives me most peace of mind.
There has been a key change, though, to the way I now apply these rules. Earlier, I would prioritize fund house selection over diversification. That is no longer the case. I have come to believe that adequate diversification deserves the highest priority over anything else. What that means is that I will invest in as many fund houses as meets my requirement for adequate diversification, even if they don’t meet my quality standards. This excludes a select set of fund houses that I have black listed.
This was brought about largely by the way that the people at Franklin Templeton conducted themselves in the days leading to, and following the shut down. Over the years, I have seen a number of instances of fund houses making dubious decisions. However, I can’t remember anything quite as shocking as what the the people at Franklin Templeton did. As one example, consider the shoddy treatment they meted out to their FoF investors. If the people in such a storied institution could rapidly or impulsively stoop to levels vastly unbecoming of any fiduciary, then it would be hard for any quality check to factor that in.
This may sound like an over-reaction but what they did, reminded me of what William Bernstein wrote about mutual fund companies spewing “more toxic waste into the investment environment than a third-world refinery.”
