Mutual Funds: These 10 ELSS schemes gave over 15% annualised return in the past 10 years. Should you invest?

If you are a retail investor and wondering which are the investible schemes to invest, you can examine a number of factors which include the reputation of fund house, category of scheme and the past performance of scheme.

Although wealth advisors of all hues caution investors from selecting a scheme purely on the basis of its past performance, it is still vital to know how the scheme performed over a period of time.

Here we list out the absolute returns delivered by equity linked savings scheme (ELSS) in the past 10 years as on Oct 1, 2024.

For the unversed, these schemes refer to equity mutual funds, which enable investors to claim tax deduction.

ELSS are equity mutual funds which invest at least 80 per cent in stocks in accordance with Equity Linked Saving Scheme, 2005, notified by Ministry of Finance.

These schemes come with a lock-in period of three years and enable investors to claim a deduction of upto ₹1.5 lakh under section 80C of Income Tax.

There are 42 ELSS schemes in the mutual fund universe with net assets under management (AUM) amounting to ₹2.52 lakh crore. The number of mutual fund folios of ELSS mutual funds stand at 1,65,49,630, reveals the AMFI data as on Aug 31, 2024.

These are the top performing ELSS mutual funds based on their absolute returns as on Oct 1.

(Source: AMFI, returns as on Oct 1, 2024)

As we can see in the table above, top performing schemes include Bank of India ELSS Tax Saver Fund and DSP ELSS Tax Saver Fund which delivered 18.03 per cent and 17.60 per cent annualised return, respectively.

This means if you had invested ₹one lakh in Bank of India ELSS Tax Saver Fund 10 years ago, it would have grown to ₹5.24 lakh. The same investment, if compounded at 17.60 percent (given by DSP ELSS Tax Saver Fund), would have become ₹5.05 lakh.

It is, meanwhile, important to know that the past returns  although important -- are not the deciding factor for any mutual fund's future returns. The past performance may, or may not, continue in the near future.

In another news, capital markets regulator Sebi released a set of new rules pertaining to introduction of new investment class i.e., ‘Investment Strategies’ in order to bridge the gap between mutual funds and portfolio management services. Read this Livemint story for more details.

Note: This story is for informational purposes only. Please speak to a Sebi-registered investment advisor before making any investment related decision.