Assets in custody and portfolio managers: methods

Code: pipeline/tipsheet/compute/sebi_holdings.py, pipeline/tipsheet/publish/sebi_holdings.py, step sebi_holdings. Pages: /ownership/#custody, /funds/pms/, the SIF comparison on /funds/pms/#sif and SIF assets per folio on /funds/sif/.

Sources

• SEBI Bulletin, monthly, through sebi_bulletin_series family custody: the table “Assets under the Custody of Custodians”, the value of securities custodians hold for each client type at month end, April 2014 onward.
• SEBI’s monthly PMS data via IndiaDataHub (india_data_hub_series, the 44 CMPM* series of Capital Markets > PMS): clients and assets by mandate and asset class, and EPFO/provident-fund assets, December 2010 onward.
• SEBI Bulletin PMS table (sebi_bulletin_series family portfolio_managers), parsed independently. It is used only as a cross-check.
• AMFI SIF monthly report (amfi_sif_monthly): SIF folios and month-end AUM, October 2025 onward.

Custody

• Client types: foreign portfolio investors, mutual funds, insurers, pension funds, banks, foreign direct investors, and everyone else. “Everyone else” covers foreign depositories (the shares behind ADRs and GDRs), NRIs, corporates, financial institutions, FVCIs, OCBs and SEBI’s “others”.
• Totals are the sum of the client types. SEBI’s printed total agrees within 0.14% in every month it is printed. The step fails if any month differs by more than 1%. December 2024’s printed total is one tenth of its parts in four issues, and my data archive drops it.
• Custody covers every security held with a custodian, listed or not, including bonds and money-market instruments. It is wider than the listed-share ownership from PRIME on the same page, and the two are not comparable.
• Insurers and pension funds jump for October 2016 alone. SEBI’s total for that month includes the jump, so it is kept as printed.

Portfolio managers

• Mandates. Discretionary: the manager decides. Non-discretionary: the client approves each trade. Advisory: the manager advises, and SEBI reports the value of assets advised on; zeros printed in its place are treated as missing. Co-investment: from April 2022.
• Listed shares per client is discretionary plus non-discretionary listed equity, divided by the clients of those two mandates.
• Provident-fund money (EPFO and other PFs) is SEBI’s own series, available every month. It is shown as a share of all PMS assets: 72% in July 2026.
• Reporting break, November 2020. SEBI moved PMS reporting to its SI Portal. Discretionary clients fall from 145,404 to 91,910 while discretionary assets do not move, so client counts on either side are not comparable. Charts mark the line.
• Incomplete months. When discretionary clients fall more than 8% below the last full month and recover within two months, not every manager had reported. SEBI’s April 2023 note says “submissions made by 336 PMS till May 18, 2023”. Clients and assets are both partial in such months, so the whole month is left blank: August and November 2022, April and May 2023.
• Missing managers and breaks in asset figures. When total PMS assets fall more than 25% below the last full month and recover within a year, a large manager is missing from the data. Every asset figure is left blank for those months: April to October 2011, when discretionary and provident-fund assets halve while clients do not move. Within the provident-fund series alone, a one- or two-month fall of more than 8% that recovers is also left blank: September 2012 repeats September 2011’s figure, and April 2014 and May 2015 dip for a month.
• Mutual fund holdings start in January 2024. SEBI’s series is ₹33,609 crore in November 2023, ₹1,95,551 crore in December 2023 and ₹64,809 crore in January 2024. It then rises from that higher level, which suggests reporting changed.
• Cross-check with the Bulletin. Discretionary clients agree within 0.5% in 124 of 137 shared months, and discretionary listed equity in 121 of 135. Most of the rest are the same value one month apart, from issues whose columns the Bulletin parse dates a month off. In January–May 2016 the Bulletin’s discretionary total is about ₹10.2 lakh crore against ₹7.9 lakh crore here. The step reports these counts on every run (funds/pms/checks).

SIFs beside PMS

SIF folios are accounts: one investor in two SIFs counts twice. PMS clients are client accounts reported by managers. SEBI’s minimum ticket is ₹10 lakh for a SIF and ₹50 lakh for a PMS. AUM per SIF folio is month-end AUM divided by folios.