SIPs in these mutual funds did not make any money even after 5 years

Many investors believe that investing in equity mutual fund schemes through an SIP or Systematic Investment Plan is a sure-shot way to create wealth. However, SIPs in some mutual fund schemes failed to create any wealth even after five years. In other words, the current value of their SIP investments is lower than the sum invested in the last five years.

Yes, SIPs in eight equity mutual fund schemes failed to create wealth even after five years. In fact, they have delivered negative returns at the end of five years.

For example, if someone started SIP of Rs 1,000 per month in Reliance Tax Saver Fund five years ago, he would have invested Rs 60,000 in the last five years. Sadly, the present value of his investment would be around Rs 55,000. Reliance Tax Saver is the biggest fund in terms of AUM among the eight schemes that failed to deliver in the last five years. Other laggards include six small cap funds, and one mid cap fund. You can see the table below for the eight schemes that failed to create wealth for their SIP investors.


We chose to look at the SIP performance over a period of five years because five years is considered as the minimum recommended time period to invest in equity funds.

What about the performance of other schemes? Well, only two schemes out of 139 actively-managed equity funds delivered double-digit annualised SIP returns in the five-year period.

SIP in Mirae Asset Emerging Bluechip Fund delivered 12.30 per cent XIRR returns in the last five years and Axis Bluechip Fund gave XIRR returns of 11.40 per cent.

Around 70 mutual fund schemes delivered returns between five per cent and 9.90 per cent.

We have considered actively managed large cap funds, mid cap schemes, large & mid cap funds, small cap funds, multi cap schemes and tax-saving or ELSS funds. However, filtered out schemes that have not completed five years. The data was taken from Ace Mutual Fund database.

Abysmal performance of equity mutual funds in the last year has dragged the returns in the five-year period as well. Around 75 per cent equity mutual funds delivered negative SIP XIRR returns in the last 18 months. The performance was equally bad in the last two years. Around 72 per cent equity schemes gave negative returns during the period.

8 mutual fund schemes delivered negative 5- year SIP returns

Scheme	AUM (Rs crore)	XIRR(%)	Rs 60,000 invested in the 5-year SIP term eroded to
Quant Small Cap Fund	2	-8.27	48,669
Sundaram Small Cap Fund	996	-4.17	54,001
Reliance Tax Saver (ELSS) Fund	9,659	-2.85	55,846
Union Small Cap Fund	288	-2.44	56,415
HSBC Small Cap Equity Fund	668	-1.92	57,164
PGIM India Midcap Opp Fund	109	-1.55	57,696
Aditya Birla SL Small Cap Fund	2,174	-1.16	58,277
SBI Magnum Midcap Fund	3,303	-0.06	59,905

5-year monthly SIP returns between September 10, 2014 and August 10, 2019
Source: Ace MF