FACT SHEET - JANUARY 2022

Greetings!

Over the past few days there has been a flurry of social media posts and chatter around funds stopping
inflows for investing abroad. This note is to give background on the same.

Summary (TL;DR)

All in all, nothing much needs to be done by investors.

Background

RBI and SEBI have allowed mutual funds to invest in overseas securities for a while now. RBI being the
central bank of the country sets the overall limit while SEBI being the securities market regulator sets up
the per fund limit.

The overall limit of $ 7 billion plus $ 1 billion for foreign ETFs was set by RBI way back on April 3, 2008

This limit of $ 7 billion was an increase from $ 5 billion which itself was an increase from $ 4 billion in
quick succession over a few years.

The per fund house limit has also been increased regularly by SEBI. In recent times that limit has gone up from $ 300 million to $ 600 million to $ 1 billion which is the current limit.

At PPFAS we have remitted less than $ 725 million and we still had ample room for further foreign
investments, however the industry wide limit of $ 7 billion is being hit and hence the industry wide
stoppage of inflows into schemes investing abroad.

Why has the limit not been increased?
The simple reason for not increasing the limit for 14 years in my opinion is that there was no need to
increase it. The overall assets being invested abroad continued to be miniscule and we could easily
manage within the $ 7 billion limit.

Why do I think that this situation is temporary?
RBI and SEBI have been very supportive of well regulated systematic investments. In fact even other
regulated activities like Alternative Investment Funds are permitted to invest abroad up to a limit of $ 1.5
billion.

The $ 7 billion limit was set in April of 2008 when the Assets Under Management of the Mutual Funds in
India were around Rs 5 lakh crores and India’s foreign exchange reserves were around $ 309 billion.
Today the same numbers are around Rs 37 lakh crores and $ 634 billion. Conditions are very conducive
for RBI to increase the limits. It is just that the pace of inflows into schemes investing overseas has been
brisk and the prospect of a breach in the aforesaid investment limit appeared increasingly likely. Hence,
the Regulators sought to intervene pre-emptively.

What is the situation today?
For the existing investments, nothing changes. Our portfolio is as it was. Our NAV will go up and down
based on the performance of our investee companies and market conditions. There have been irrational
fears that this could lead to a drop in NAV etc. Nothing of such a nature will happen. There is also no
restriction on redemptions. The same terms that were there earlier for redemptions are applicable today
as well.

We cannot remit further funds abroad starting February 2, 2022 till the time the limits are increased.
Hence on an incremental basis, all investments will be in Indian stocks (we can surely sell something from our foreign stocks and buy some other foreign stocks, we just cannot remit money out).

Given this situation we have stopped fresh lump sum investments and fresh registrations of SIPs and
STPs into the Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund. We could have kept inflows open. However, given that other schemes investing abroad will stop taking inflows, we would have got a flood of inflows which would have to be deployed only in Indian stocks in a short span of time resulting in an impact cost on account of speedy deployment. Hypothetically, if our AUM doubled and we were not able to remit money outside, our weightage to foreign stocks would fall from say 30% to 15%. This would alter the portfolio structure for existing investors. Hence the restrictions on inflow of funds.

A couple of months of current SIP / STP inflows will not alter the current portfolio structure in any
meaningful way. Hence those have not been restricted.

What about new investors? What about existing investors wanting to invest more?
Option A: Just wait for a while and if the limit increase happens you can invest into the Parag Parikh
Flexi Cap Fund just like before.

Option B: We continue to have an equity scheme which is open for subscription like before. The Parag
Parikh Tax Saver Fund. This invests only in Indian stocks and has a lock in period of 3 years.

Apart from our two equity schemes we have the Parag Parikh Conservative Hybrid Fund for your debt
investments and the Parag Parikh Liquid Fund for your cash management needs.

Happy Investing...

Rajeev Thakkar


Chief Investment Officer and Director

Mutual Fund investments are subject to market risks, read all scheme related documents carefully.