If stock markets are at high levels, as they are right now, investing can be risky. But it doesn't mean that an investor should stay away from equities and risk earning returns that are lower than inflation. This need of limiting downside risk and at the same time earning inflation beating returns is met by Balanced Funds. By investing in both equity and debt, these funds keep risk under control. However, when markets rise, investors in Balanced funds have to remain content with marginally lower returns than equity funds. This however, is more than compensated when they fall much lesser than equity funds too.

Investing in Balanced funds also allows investors to practice prudence wherein their portfolio captures upside by increasing allocation to equity when the markets are declining, and limits downside by reducing exposure to equities when markets are rising- completely reverse of what retail investors normally do. An added advantage is that Balanced funds are Tax efficient. Any fund that invests more than 65% money in stocks is treated as an equity fund for taxation. Even the debt portion is then taxed like equity. Therefore, these funds enjoy tax-free returns if the holding period is greater than a year (short term capital gains are taxed at 15%)

With a sterling record of over 20 years, BSL'95 Fund, one of our flagship schemes, helps investors achieve long-term growth of their investment at moderate levels of risk by striking a balance between potential growth of equity and relative safety of debt. The fund is declaring its second quarterly dividend of 2016-17, an amount of Rs. 3.8/unit (approx. dividend yield of 2.52%) and Rs. 4.0/unit (approx. dividend yield of 2.0%) under Regular and Direct plan respectively, record date being 30 September 2016.

Following are some of the features of the fund:

·         Ranked Number 1 in the Balanced schemes category by CRISIL for quarter ending June. (CPR 1)

·         The fund has generated 100% positive returns over a 5 year period and has beaten Nifty 50 92.9% of the time (as of August 31 2016)

·         The fund has grown by 64.2 times since inception (10/02/1995) giving a return of 21.28% p.a  outperforming  the Nifty 50 by around 7% which generated a return of 14.08% p.a (as on Aug 31 2016)

·         The fund has declared 29 dividends till date amounting to a total of Rs 111.39 and has declared dividends in 18 out of 21 years

·         Birla SunLife Balanced 95 Fund Performance