1. Compliance Function: The Compliance Officer needs to ensure all the legal compliances. In the scheme documents of new issues, the Compliance Officer signs a due-diligence certificate to the effect that all regulations have been complied with, and that all the intermediaries mentioned in the scheme related documents have the requisite statutory registrations and approvals. To ensure independence, the Compliance Officer reports directly to the head of the AMC. The Compliance Officer works closely with the Trustees on various compliance and regulatory issues. It is the responsibility of the compliance officer to report any issue of non-compliance directly and immediately to the trustees.

2. Fund management: Fund management is the most critical function in an Asset Management Company. It is at the core of the value proposition offered by the firm. The main function of this team is to invest the investors’ money in line with the stated objective of the scheme and to manage the same effectively. Normally, the team can be broken into three sub-teams, viz., the analysts, the fund managers, and the dealers. The analysts analyse various opportunities, be it individual securities, or sectors, or the state of the markets, or the economy. Some of them may analyse the stock markets, whereas some may analyse debt markets. Within debt markets, some may evaluate credit opportunities, whereas some may analyse the interest rate movements. Their job is to identify investment Opportunities.The fund managers evaluate the opportunities presented to them by the analysts, the brokers, and other research firms. They may also identify opportunities by themselves. The performance of the scheme is the fund manager’s responsibility. The third sub-team is that of the dealers, whose responsibility is to place orders with securities brokers based on the instructions of the fund managers.

3. Operations and customer services team: When a customer visits a branch office of an AMC, s/he is attended to by the customer services team. Such a team is also called the front office team. Apart from this front office team, there is also a team in the back office to help investors by resolving various queries. Both these together are part of the Customer Services Team. Many AMCs have adopted information technology solutions and have set up call centers and chatbots to answer customer queries and resolve service issues. The Registrar and Transfer Agency (RTA), which is a big part of this unit, maintains investor records as well as allots or redeems units, processes purchase/redemption/switch requests, dividends, etc. It also generates the account statement that an investor receives. There is a Custody Team within this group that interacts with the custodian for the purpose of settlement of various transactions that the fund management team initiates. The Fund accounting team maintains books of accounts of each individual mutual fund scheme and calculates NAV on a daily basis. The cash management team works as an interface between the banks and the fund management team–they ensure that money received in the bank when investors purchase units are passed on to the fund managers for further investment in securities and the investors get the redemption proceeds when they submit the redemption request.

4. Sales and Marketing Team: This team reaches out to the investors through mass media, marketing campaigns and through a distribution channel. Their major responsibilities include branding, advertising, management of various events, and distribution of mutual fund products through various distribution channels. Mostly, it is this team that would interact with the mutual fund distributors, and take care of relationship management and engagement. This team also helps in the growth of the distribution network through various interactions and training programs.