Sponsor
Also written Sponsors · Fund sponsor
The person or firm that sets up the mutual fund — applies to SEBI for registration, executes the trust deed in favour of the trustees, and puts up the capital of the AMC.
In plain language
Somebody has to start a mutual fund. That somebody is the sponsor: the main person behind the business, the promoter in ordinary language.
The sponsor does three things and then, deliberately, steps back. It applies to SEBI for registration of the fund. It creates the trust by executing a trust deed in favour of the trustees. And it invests in the capital of the AMC that will run the schemes.
What it does not get is the money. The trust's beneficiaries are the unit-holders, and the whole structure exists to keep the sponsor's interest and the investors' interest apart.
How it works
SEBI's eligibility bar for a sponsor is one of the most reliably examined lists in the paper:
- A sound track record and a reputation of fairness and integrity in all business transactions.
- Carrying on business in financial services for not less than 5 years.
- A positive net worth in all the immediately preceding 5 years — net worth being share capital plus reserves minus accumulated losses.
- A fit and proper person for this kind of operation.
Then the checks and balances start. The trustees the sponsor appoints must be at least two-thirds independent of the sponsor, the AMC and the trustee company. And the custodian is ring-fenced: if the sponsor or its associates control 50 percent or more of the voting rights of a custodian, or if 50 percent or more of that custodian's directors represent the interest of the sponsor or its associates, that custodian cannot be appointed for the sponsor's own mutual fund operation unless specific conditions are met.
One of the trustees' stated core responsibilities is to ensure the AMC's operations are not unduly influenced by its sponsor.
A worked example
A Pune-based non-banking finance company with 17 years in lending and a net worth that has stayed positive — Rs 480 crore, Rs 505 crore, Rs 540 crore, Rs 610 crore and Rs 690 crore over the last five financial years — decides to launch a mutual fund.
It clears the bar: more than 5 years in financial services, and positive net worth in each of the immediately preceding 5 years.
It applies to SEBI, executes a trust deed in favour of a trustee company, and subscribes Rs 150 crore to the equity capital of a newly formed AMC. The AMC launches its first scheme, which raises Rs 900 crore in the NFO.
The two amounts never mix. The Rs 150 crore is the sponsor's shareholding in an operating company, and its return on it is the AMC's profit from fees. The Rs 900 crore belongs to the scheme's unit-holders and sits with an independent custodian. Had the sponsor also owned 60 percent of the custodian it wanted to use, SEBI would not have permitted the appointment.
Why NISM asks about it
Chapter 3.2.1 (Sponsors) is short and almost entirely numeric, which makes it prime question material: the 5 years of financial services business and positive net worth in each of the 5 preceding years are asked directly. Chapter 3.1 supplies the structural point — that the sponsor creates the trust and appoints the AMC — and Chapter 3.2.5 supplies the 50 percent custodian restriction. AMFI's website classifies AMCs by the category of their sponsor: banks, institutions and private sector.
Common exam traps
- The sponsor is not the trustee and is not the AMC. It creates the first and capitalises the second. A question naming the sponsor as day-to-day manager is wrong.
- Positive net worth is required in all five preceding years, not on average and not just in the latest year.
- Net worth means share capital plus reserves minus accumulated losses — the workbook gives the definition, so the arithmetic can be asked.
- The sponsor does not own the scheme's assets. The unit-holders are the beneficiaries of the trust.
- The 50 percent custodian threshold is about the sponsor's control of the custodian, not about the sponsor's stake in the AMC — which can be, and usually is, 100 percent.
Where this is taught
- Series V-B · Chapter 3: Legal Structure of mutual fundsintroduced here
- Series XIX-D · Chapter 4: Alternative Investment Funds Ecosystemintroduced here
- Series V-D · Chapter 3: Legal Structure of Mutual Funds in Indiaintroduced here
- Series V-A · Chapter 3: Legal Structure of Mutual Funds in Indiaintroduced here
- Series X-A · Chapter 11: Mutual Fundintroduced here
- Series II-B · Chapter 9: Structure and Constituents of Mutual Fundsintroduced here
- Series XIX-A · Chapter 3: Concepts in Alternative Investment Funds Industryintroduced here
- Series XIX-C · Chapter 7: Alternative Investment Funds Ecosystemintroduced here
Related terms
- Net Asset ValueThe net assets of a mutual fund scheme divided by the number of units outstanding — what one unit of the scheme is worth on a given day, after every liability except the unitholders' own.
- Asset Management CompanyThe company that runs a mutual fund's schemes day to day — appointed by the sponsor or trustees with SEBI's approval, and paid a fee out of the scheme rather than a share of its profits.
- Mutual fundA trust registered with SEBI that pools money from many investors and invests it in securities on their behalf — not a different product from shares and bonds, but a different way of owning them.
- Registrar and Transfer AgentThe SEBI-registered agency that keeps the investor records of a mutual fund — processing purchases and redemptions, updating folios and unit capital, and issuing account statements.
- Trust deedThe instrument governing the operations of the mutual fund trust, executed by the sponsor in favour of the trustees and registered under the Indian Registration Act, 1908.
- Board of TrusteesThe collective name for individuals appointed as trustees.
- Obligations of trusteesThe duties SEBI places on a mutual fund's trustees: hold scheme property in trust, review every AMC-associate transaction quarterly, and certify to SEBI half-yearly that nothing improper happened.
- Change in control of the AMCWhen ownership of a mutual fund's AMC changes hands, SEBI and the trustees must approve it first and every unit holder must be offered at least 30 calendar days to exit at NAV with no exit load.
- Norms for shareholding in mutual fundsA rule that stops one fund house owning a piece of another: no sponsor, associate or 10% shareholder of one AMC or trustee company may hold 10% or more of, or sit on the board of, another mutual fund's.
- Infrastructure debt fund schemesA mutual fund scheme that must put at least 90% of its assets into the debt of infrastructure companies, projects and SPVs, with a 30% cap on any single infrastructure borrower.
- Real estate mutual fund schemesA mutual fund scheme holding actual property: at least 35% of net assets directly in completed, unencumbered Indian real estate, and at least 75% in real estate assets and related securities.
- Fit and proper person criteriaThe continuing character and capability test for a SEBI intermediary, its key people and its 20%-plus owners — eleven disqualifications, any one of which is enough to fail it.