The 10 largest fund houses paid ₹16,551 crore in commissions in FY26, up 12 per cent compared to ₹14,797 crore paid out in FY25, according to commission disclosures by the asset management companies.
Fund houses pay commissions to distributors based on the assets mobilised by them and retained in their schemes. The annual commission rate varies across schemes and can range from a few basis points to over 1 per cent of the assets, depending on the scheme.
The analysis shows that commissions paid to sponsor banks or the largest distributors grew at a slower pace than overall payouts, even as bank-sponsored fund houses continued to rely heavily on their parent banks’ branch networks to sell their mutual fund schemes.
SBI MF paid ₹1,605 crore to its sponsor, State Bank of India, in FY26, 10.4 per cent higher than in FY25. Its overall commission payout rose 10.7 per cent to ₹3,159 crore in FY26. In the case of ICICI Prudential MF, commissions to ICICI Bank rose 9.1 per cent to ₹379 crore, compared with a 17.5 per cent YoY rise in total commissions to ₹2,783 crore.
HDFC MF paid ₹310 crore to HDFC Bank as commissions in FY26, up only 5 per cent. In comparison, its total commission payout rose 13.4 per cent to ₹2,471 crore. The other two large bank-backed fund houses also showed a similar trend.
NJ IndiaInvest remained the largest distributor for most of the large AMCs, including bank-sponsored Kotak MF. The national distributor earned ₹1,071 crore in gross commissions from five of the 10 largest fund houses for which it was the biggest distributor.
