Regulatory updates
Circular changes that actually affect what you're required to do — sourced directly from the regulator, in reverse-chronological order.
Following the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations, 2026, schemes are now classified at the top level into Equity, Debt, Hybrid, Life Cycle Funds, and "Other Schemes" (Fund of Funds, passive schemes like Index Funds/ETFs) — the umbrella structure a distributor should map every sub-category (multi cap, flexi cap, etc.) against.
Mutual funds holding physical gold or silver (as in Gold/Silver ETFs) must value those holdings using the polled spot prices published by recognized stock exchanges — the same prices used to settle physically-delivered gold/silver derivatives contracts — under a spot-polling mechanism SEBI specifies from time to time.
AMCs' RTAs (CAMS and KFin) jointly run a new industry-wide searchable database — MITRA — that helps investors find folios with no investor-initiated transaction in the last 10 years but a remaining unit balance. A distributor should know this exists: it's a real channel to help a client recover a forgotten investment, and it doubles as a nudge toward KYC updates.
Every equity scheme's Information Ratio — excess return over its benchmark divided by the standard deviation of that excess return — must now be published daily on the AMC's website alongside existing performance disclosures, and made available via AMFI in a downloadable, machine-readable format.
SEBI introduced a relaxed, light-touch regulatory regime — MF Lite — for passively managed schemes (index funds/ETFs tracking large domestic equity or debt indices, Gold/Silver ETFs, and certain FoFs), on the reasoning that provisions built for actively managed funds aren't all necessary for passive ones. A distributor should recognize an MF Lite scheme as sitting under different eligibility/AUM rules than a regular scheme.
Every scheme's Risk-o-meter must be re-evaluated every month, not just periodically, and published alongside the portfolio disclosure on both the AMC's and AMFI's websites within 10 calendar days of month-end. AMCs must also publish a year-on-year table in the Annual Report showing how many times each scheme's risk level changed.