UTI MF awaits nod to take over IT firm

Chennai, Mar 7 (UNI) UTI Mutual Fund, the country's largest mutual fund with Rs 25,400 crore plus corpus, is awaiting regulatory nod for acquiring one of the information technology (IT) firms to handle its registrar and transfer agents work.

Addressing a press conference here , UTI AMC Executive Director D S R Murthy said it was contemplating to acquire an IT firm for the purpose of handling the registrar and transfer agents work.

''The framework of analysis is on.. it is on our radar,'' he said, adding that the identified company would work like any other profit centre.

Once the regulatory side was taken care of, the proposal would come through, he said adding that 67 to 68 per cent of all India investors were in its fold.

The four registrars of UTI MF were UTI Technology Services Company, Cams, Karvy and Datamatics. As the investor base was expanding, IT support had to be provided as aspects like net asset value on a daily basis was getting crucial.

Currently, processing of applications took around five days but online connectivity in its 300 Chief Representative centres, this calendar year, would facilitate investors. In the last month, 21 such centres were online.

Launching the UTI-Contra Fund, which was closing on March 22 and reopening for continuous purchase and redemption from April 20 onwards, he said UTI was a changed ''new vitalised'' entity. ''We want to grow more than the market in the next one year.'' Funds with ''more innovation'' were on the ''drawing boards,'' he said adding that there had been a ''big'' change in the number of investors and ''size'' of collection.

In the last one year distribution intermediaries had been showing tremendous interest and applications were received from small centres like Karimnagar.

Before April 2005, south's contribution to all India sales was 17 to 18 per cent but it had now gone up to around 23 per cent. Of this, 30 per cent was from Tamil Nadu, which had grown by ten per cent in the last one year.

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