FUND OF FUNDS (FOF)

A ‘Fund Of Funds’ (FOF) is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds or other securities. An FOF Scheme of a primarily invests in the units of another Mutual Fund scheme. This type of investing is often referred to as multi-manager investment

These schemes offer the investor an opportunity to diversify risk by spreading investments across multiple funds. The underlying investments for a FoF are the units of other mutual fund schemes either from the same mutual fund or other mutual fund houses.

Experts believe fund of funds are generally better suited for smaller investors that want to gain access to a range of different asset classes or for those whose advisers do not have the expertise to make single manager recommendations.

Under current Income Tax regime in India, a FOF is treated as a non-Equity fund and consequently taxed accordingly. In other words, even though a FOF may be investing in equity oriented funds, the FOF itself is not regarded as an equity oriented fund, and consequently, the tax benefits currently available to an equity fund are not available to an FOF. Consequently, in case of FOFs investing in equity securities of domestic companies via EOFs, there is dual levy of Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT), viz., when the domestic companies distribute dividends to their shareholders and again, when the FOF distributes the dividends to its unit-holders.