Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund suspends subscription of units in its retirement fund

Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund has announced the suspension of the sale of units of Franklin India Retirement Fund till further notice, with effect from May 20.

According to a notice-cum-addendum by the fund house, fresh/additional purchases through lumpsum mode, switch into the scheme from any other schemes of Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund, investments through Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) and/or Systematic Transfer Plan (STP) and fresh registrations of SIP and STP shall be temporarily discontinued.

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This temporary suspension is being implemented to address the requirements specified under Categorization and Rationalization of Mutual Fund Schemes specified under Chapter 3 of the SEBI Master Circular for Mutual Fund dated March 20, 2026.

All the other terms and conditions of the Scheme Information Document/ Key Information Memorandum of the scheme, read with the addenda issued from time to time, will remain unchanged. This addendum forms an integral part of the Scheme Information Document/ Key Information Memorandum issued for the scheme, read with the addenda issued from time to time.

On February 26, the market regulator announced the discontinuation of the solution-oriented scheme category, which includes children’s and retirement funds.

According to the regulator, the solution-oriented category stands discontinued from the date of the circular, and existing schemes under this segment will stop accepting fresh subscriptions with immediate effect. These schemes will be merged with other schemes having similar asset allocation and risk profiles, subject to prior approval from Sebi.

In July 2025, when Sebi proposed to review the categorisation of mutual fund schemes to improve clarity, introduce new schemes and to address the issue of overlap in portfolios of schemes, the market regulator said that in the case of solution oriented funds, mutual funds should be allowed to offer different types of schemes in the solution oriented category offering a different mix of equity and debt portion and the asset allocation stated should be appropriate for the solution oriented category scheme.

Life Cycle Fund will be an open-ended fund with attributes of predetermined maturity and glide path for goal-based investing, and the scheme will follow a glide path strategy based on investing across various asset classes, i.e. Equity, Debt, InvITs, ETCDs, Gold & Silver ETF.

Mutual funds may launch Life Cycle Funds with a minimum tenure of five years and a maximum tenure of 30 years. Such a fund may be launched for tenures in multiples of 5 years, and a maximum of 6 funds by a Mutual Fund can be active for subscription at any given point in time.

On March 20, Sebi, in another notice, said that an AMC may opt to continue retirement funds. However, such AMC may not launch a 30-year life cycle fund and may launch either/all of the remaining five life cycle funds.

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With the launch of life cycle funds, experts said that this structure makes life cycle funds more dynamic and aligned with how an investor’s risk profile changes over time, unlike traditional solution-oriented funds that follow a relatively static allocation.

As of April 30, 2026, Franklin India Retirement Fund had an AUM of Rs 497 crore and is benchmarked against the CRISIL Short Term Debt Hybrid 60+40 Index.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

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