Did your ELSS Fund’s name change? Should you do anything?

Mutual fund houses are busy renaming their tax saving schemes or Equity Linked Saving Schemes. At least 23 ELSS funds have changed their names in the recent past (See table). The name change comes after the regulator Sebi asked fund houses on September 26 to use uniform nomenclature to facilitate easy identification by investors.

Fund houses earlier used to name their schemes as per their choice, but the new names have ELSS and/or tax saver in them. For example, ICICI Prudential Long Term Equity Fund (Tax Saving) is renamed ICICI Prudential ELSS Tax Saver Fund. Similarly, Mirae Asset Tax Saver Fund will now be called Mirae Asset ELSS Tax Saver Fund.

New names for tax saver funds

Old name	New name
360 ONE ELSS Tax Saver Nifty 50 Index Fund	360 ONE ELSS Nifty 50 Tax Saver Index Fund
Bandhan ELSS Tax Saver Fund	Bandhan Tax Advt(ELSS) Fund
Canara Robeco Equity Tax Saver Fund	Canara Robeco ELSS Tax Saver
DSP Tax Saver Fund	DSP ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Edelweiss Long Term Equity Fund (Tax Savings)	Edelweiss ELSS Tax saver Fund
HDFC TaxSaver	HDFC ELSS Tax saver
HSBC ELSS Fund	HSBC ELSS Tax saver Fund
ICICI Prudential Long Term Equity Fund (Tax Saving)	ICICI Prudential ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Invesco India Tax Plan	Invesco India ELSS Tax Saver Fund
ITI ELSS Tax Saver Fund	ITI Long Term Equity Fund
JM Tax Gain Fund	JM ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Kotak Tax Saver Fund	Kotak Tax Saver Fund
LIC MF ELSS	LIC MF ELSS Tax Saver
Mahindra Manulife ELSS Tax Saver Fund	Mahindra Manulife ELSS Fund
Mirae Asset Tax Saver Fund	Mirae Asset ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Motilal Oswal Long Term Equity Fund	Motilal Oswal ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Nippon India Tax Saver (ELSS) Fund	“Nippon India ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Parag Parikh ELSS Tax Saver Fund	Parag Parikh Tax Saver Fund
Sundaram Tax Savings Fund	Sundaram ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Tata India Tax Savings Fund	Tata ELSS Tax Saver Fund
Taurus Tax Shield Fund	Taurus ELSS Tax Saver Fund
UTI Long Term Equity Fund (Tax Saving)	UTI ELSS Tax Saver Fund
WhiteOak Capital Tax Saver Fund	WhiteOak Capital ELSS Tax Saver Fund

According to the fund houses, all other terms and conditions of the scheme information document (SID) and key information memorandum (KIM) of these schemes remain the same.

“This change is generally to bring uniformity across the names and the category. This guideline by Sebi will bring parity on the name of the schemes. Most of the fund houses have it in other categories, now they are bringing parity in this category,” says Chokkalingam Palaniappan, Director of Prakala Wealth, a Chennai-based advisory firm.

“This communication will just change the name of the scheme, and will not bring any material change in the scheme assets,” he added.

Simply put, mutual fund investors need not do anything about their investments as the name change does not change anything in their tax saving schemes. Tax saving funds help investors to save taxes of up to Rs 1.5 lakh in a financial year.