Don’t Judge A Mutual Fund Only By Its Expense Ratio Yogesh Pal Singh Some of my older mutual fund (MF) investments are through an agency and some are direct. What is the brokerage charge for MFs? How are returns affected due to brokerage fee? When you talk about brokerage charges, I am assuming that you are talking about the commission an intermediary or agent gets or the total fee charged by a mutual fund. For this we need to understand the expense ratio of a mutual fund scheme. Every mutual fund scheme charges a fee, called expense ratio. This is expressed in percentage per annum. It is used for administrative, management and all other expenses, including the intermediary expenses or distributors’ commission. How much schemes charge is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). The ratio is normally 1.05-2.25 per cent for equity-oriented mutual funds and 0.07-2 per cent for most other schemes, excluding exchange-traded funds (ETFs), index funds and fund of funds. Debt funds normally have lower expense ratio compared to equity funds; passive funds...