CRISIL Research, India’s largest independent and integrated research house, has launched 3 more hybrid indices and also changed the methodology of all its existing hybrid indices to align with the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (SEBI) new guidelines.

Called the CRISIL Hybrid 25+75 - Aggressive Index, the CRISIL Hybrid 50+50 - Moderate Index, and the CRISIL Hybrid 75+25 - Conservative Index – the debt component of these 3 indices is represented by the CRISIL Composite Bond Fund Index, while the equity component is represented by the total return variant of S&P BSE 200.

CRISIL’s other hybrid indices have also migrated to the total return variant of S&P BSE 200 so that the entire hybrid portfolio is compliant with the SEBI-mandated categories for mutual funds, and with the regulator’s guideline asking mutual funds to benchmark their schemes with a total return index.

The CAGR of the CRISIL Hybrid 25+75 - Aggressive Index since inception stands at 15.8%, while that of the CRISIL Hybrid 75+25 - Conservative Index and the CRISIL Hybrid 50+50 - Moderate Index are at 10.23% and 13.16%, respectively.

Says Nagarajan Narasimhan, Senior Director, CRISIL Research: “We were already incorporating total returns in the debt component of our hybrids. Now with equity dividends also factored in, benchmarking will provide a clearer picture of mutual fund performance to the investors and facilitate an apple to apple comparison. This will also help AMCs benchmark their funds appropriately in the light of SEBI circular on total return benchmarks.”

CRISIL now has 8 hybrid indices with varying combinations of debt and equity to align with different portfolio strategies. Along with these indices, CRISIL maintains 51 standard indices across corporate bonds, gilt, money market, hybrids and commodity segments, thus capturing different aspects of these asset classes to help investors arrive at better decisions.

All CRISIL indices are public indices with details on index performance and portfolio constituents available on the CRISIL indices website www.crisil.com/en/home/what-we-do/financial-products/indices.html.