

Why bigger isn’t better for PMS schemes
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.MUMBAI: Bigger is proving to be a handicap for portfolio management services (PMS), with five of six large schemes analysed—each managing over ₹5,000 crore—seeing performance decline after crossing that size, an analysis by Mint shows.PMS are customized investment portfolios for high-net-worth investors, with a minimum investment of ₹50 lakh, typically built around a concentrated set of stocks.The pattern points to a structural constraint: as PMS strategies scale, deploying larger sums into high-conviction small- and mid-cap ideas becomes harder without moving prices, compressing alpha.There are 15 equity PMS schemes with assets above ₹5,000 crore as of March 2026, according to data from the Association of Portfolio Managers of India (Apmi). Of these, six schemes were analysed as they manage domestic money and invest directly in stocks.
The rest either manage foreign portfolio investor (FPI) money or invest in mutual funds and bonds. Total PMS assets stood at ₹5.3 trillion as of March 2026, excluding employee provident fund assets.About five years ago, when these schemes were much smaller, their alpha was significantly higher, according to data from PMS Bazaar, a platform for PMS and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
Today, with larger asset bases, that excess return has narrowed as funds have grown.Different schemes are benchmarked against different indices depending on their strategy. Multi-cap strategies are typically compared against the S&P BSE 500 TRI.While the relationship is not strictly linear, the data for at least five schemes show this trend.Bouyant Capital’s Opportunities scheme generated an alpha of 35.6% for a period of one year through March 2021 when
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