A majority of the large-cap equity and government bond funds underperformed their respective benchmarks in the last one year as per the latest S&P Indices Versus Active India Scorecard report.

Further, a quarter of the mid-cap and small-cap equity funds, too, underperformed their benchmarks in the last one-year period ending December 2018, as per the report.

“The latest S&P Indices Versus Active India Scorecard reveals that over the one-year period ending December, 2018, 92% of large-cap equity funds, 25.6% of mid- and small-cap equity funds and 81.6% of government bond funds underperformed their respective indices,” S&P Dow Jones Indices said in a statement.

Interestingly, the scorecard improves significantly if a longer term performance of large-cap equity funds and equity-linked savings scheme (ELSS) are taken into consideration.

As per the report, over a five-year period, about 58% of the large-cap equity funds underperformed their respective benchmarks while for ELSS it was almost 41%.

In the one-year period ending December 2018, however, nearly 96% of the ELSS schemes underperformed the benchmark. Further, over a three-year period, 88% of ELSS funds underperformed their respective benchmarks.

Govt. bond funds

On the other hand, government bond funds largely underperformed the benchmarks across various tenures.

Over a 10-year period, a little over 96% of such government bond funds underperformed the benchmark, while over a five-year time frame, it was 88%. The scorecard of such bond funds is better over a three-year period with about 71% of the funds underperforming the benchmark.