AMC

An AMC (Asset Management Company) is the company that manages a mutual fund’s schemes. It makes the investment decisions and runs the schemes day to day, but it works under the trustees and is approved by SEBI. It does not own your money; it only manages it.

What an AMC does

The AMC employs the fund managers and analysts who decide what each scheme buys and sells, within the scheme’s stated objective. It also handles the operations: launching schemes, publishing the daily NAV, and charging the expense ratio that pays for all this. The well-known fund houses are AMCs; the funds you invest in are their products.

Your money is kept separate

This is the structural safeguard worth understanding. The AMC runs the money but does not hold it. A mutual fund in India is set up as a trust: independent trustees oversee it, and a custodian actually holds the securities, all under SEBI’s rules. So even if an AMC ran into trouble, your units represent holdings kept apart from the company, not money sitting on the AMC’s own books.

Why it matters to you

You do not pick an AMC directly; you pick a scheme, and the AMC behind it comes with it. But its track record, how it handles costs, and how consistently its schemes follow their mandate are reasonable things to look at. Learn where it fits in how to pick a mutual fund.