ICICI Pru MIP 25 riding higher on equities

Launched in March 2004, ICICI Prudential MIP 25 under the MIP aggressive category of CRISIL Mutual Fund ranking, has been consistently ranked in the top 30 percentile (CRISIL Fund Rank 1 or 2) over 12 quarters ended December 2017. The fund's objective is to generate income through investments, primarily in debt and money market instruments. As a secondary objective, it also seeks to generate long-term capital appreciation from the portion of equity investments. The fund's quarterly average assets under management or AUM stood at Rs 1,458 crore as of December 2017. Over the past one year, the fund delivered 10.94 per cent absolute returns comfortably outperforming its peers 9.04 per cent and the benchmark 7.09 per cent. An investment of Rs 1,000 in the fund at the time of its launch would have grown to Rs 3,960 at a CAGR of 10.46 per cent, substantially higher than the benchmark's Rs 2,927 at 8.07 per cent and the category's Rs 3,533 at 9.55 per cent. On an average, the fund has maintained higher duration than peers over the past three years ended December 2017.The fund's duration calls have seen some hits and misses. It maintained higher duration relative to peers from April 2015 to April 2016, when yields declined about 30 bps. This was favourable for the fund owing to the inverse relationship between yields and bond prices. Subsequently, when yields rose by about 81 bps over the past year, higher duration dampened the fund's performance.

FIRST ITBP Band Concert

The 1st ITBP Band Concert was organised at Siri Fort Auditorium, New Delhi. Kiren Rijiju, Minister of State for Home was the Chief Guest. RK Pachnanda, DG, ITBP, distinguished guests, senior officers and personnel of the CAPFs and their families witnessed the Concert organised on the eve of Holi 2018. 16 tunes of various martial and indian music were presented by the Force Band. The one hour Concert was organised by Major Nazir Hussain, VSM Retd. The Concert was a classical mix of traditional military tunes and Indian and Bollywood evergreen numbers. Rijiju appreciated the Concert and said that this type of patriotic programmes should be organised by other Forces as well in the entire country. He also congratulated the ITBP for 'Best Marching Contingent Trophy' on Republic Day 2018 and lauded the contribution of ITBP Band contingent for inspiring tunes for best show by the marching contingent on Rajpath.

FPSB India, IIM-L unveil ‘Navigator of Responsible Lending — India' report

Financial Planning Standards Board India (FPSB) and Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow have released the ‘Navigator of Responsible Lending — India’ — a first of its kind report on the state of Indian consumer lending sector with respect to responsible lending practices. Focusing on small ticket (up to Rs 15,000) personal and consumer durable loans across both banks and NBFCs, the first-of-its-kind research aims to introduce the Indian consumers especially first time borrowers to the concept of responsible lending practices. Conducted from July 2017- December 2017, it evaluates the performance of industry along five selected parameters of loan application process, lender's public information, fees & charges, loan servicing and financial inclusion on the basis of information that a consumer would be able to access in public domain, through his loan journey.