In terms of performance ICICI Prudential Long-term has made its mark. Though its expense ratio has fluctuated from a high of 0.90 (August 2008) to a low of 0.22 (March 2009) before stabilizing at 0.50. The fund has outperformed its peers in all the years of its existence. Since July 2004, it has never delivered a negative return in any month.
Despite a mandate to restrict allocation to money market instruments to 10 per cent, the maturity of the portfolio has never exceeded 1 year since March 2006. The fund did invest in long-term paper till early 2006 but from December 2006 it allocated an average 72 per cent of the portfolio to Certificate of Deposits (CDs), at times inclusive of Commercial Paper (CP).
The fund tends to avoid investments in debentures, government securities, structured obligations and securitized debt. From the February 2009 to June 2009 period, it was almost wholly in CDs (always more than 90%) though in January 2009, exposure to cash and call money accounted for around 94 per cent of the portfolio.
Despite the performance, it's tiny at Rs 8.55 crore, down from Rs 183.16 crore a year ago.
