AUM (assets under management)

Assets under management is the market value of everything a scheme holds, less what it owes. For a fund house, it is the total across all its schemes. On this site it appears as fund size.

AUM changes for two reasons:

• Flows. It rises when investors buy units and falls when they redeem.
• Markets. It rises and falls with the prices of the shares and bonds the fund holds.

Fund houses publish each scheme's AUM every month. Size can matter in a few ways:

• SEBI's ceiling on the expense ratio falls in steps as a scheme grows, so large schemes tend to charge less.
• A very large small-cap or mid-cap fund can find it harder to buy or sell a stock without moving its price. Some such funds have limited lump-sum purchases for a time.
• A very small scheme may be merged into another or closed.

A larger AUM does not by itself mean higher or lower returns. The screener lets you filter funds by size, and compare shows it next to returns and costs.