ICICI Prudential Balanced fund seeks to optimise the risk-adjusted return by distributing assets between both equity and debt markets. In bullish markets equity allocation can go up to 80 per cent, which can go down to 65 per cent in bear markets. Investments are in strong businesses, driven by economic fundamentals.

The fund managers follow a bottom-up approach in companies with above-average profitability supported by sustainable competitive advantages. A disciplined top-down approach is adopted to control risk by ensuring representation of companies across different industries. They further restrict single stock investment to less than 5 per cent, although in the past there has been an instance when the allocation went as high as 10 per cent in Reliance (2007).

The fixed income allocation is actively managed, which helps reduce the overall portfolio risk. Investment is mostly in government securities and corporate debt and currently the average maturity is on the higher side of around six years.

Performance

This fund fared poorly in its first year, but recovered during 2000-2006. However, it got into a rough patch from 2007 to 2009. In 2009, when the category average was 61.16, this fund posted only 50.73 per cent. For the past 3 years this fund has been in the top-2 quartile and stabilised its performance. Finance, Auto and Energy are the top-3 sectors. The fund has improved its performance with investments in large-cap quality stocks such as Reliance Industries, Infosys, Mahindra & Mahindra, ITC and BHEL.

Dynamic allocation along with core debt portfolio reduces the volatility of return and has helped in this fund's performance. The fund managers have actively managed portfolio maturity duration and interest rate risk, which has helped in its superior performance. Where this fund scores is on relative high returns with low volatility. Higher expense ratio of around 2.27 per cent compared to peers, though, has impacted the returns.

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