S&P Dow Jones Indices has been the de facto scorekeeper of the ongoing active versus passive debate since the first publication of the S&P Indices Versus Active Funds (SPIVA) U.S. Scorecard in 2002. Over the years, we have built on our experience publishing the report by expanding scorecard coverage into Australia, Canada, Europe, India, Japan, Latin America, and South Africa.
The SPIVA India Scorecard compares the performance of actively managed Indian mutual funds with their respective benchmark indices over 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year investment horizons. In this scorecard, we studied the performance of three categories of actively managed equity funds and two categories of actively managed bond funds over the 1-, 3-, 5-, and 10-year periods ending in December 2020.
The strong rebound that began in early Q2 of calendar year 2020 continued into H2 2020, with the S&P BSE 100 finishing the six-month period up 36.48%. During this recovery period, the majority of the equity active funds in the Indian Equity Large-Cap and ELSS categories lagged their respective benchmarks (see Exhibit 1).
In the second half of 2020, the asset-weighted returns were lower than their respective benchmark returns in each of the Indian Equity categories: large-cap funds (by 273 bps), ELSS funds (by 318 bps) and mid- and small-cap funds (by 230 bps).
