What is the Monthly Cumulative Report (MCR)?

The Monthly Cumulative Report, or MCR, is the return every Indian mutual fund files with SEBI each month. It is not published to investors, which is why it is largely absent from explanations of mutual fund disclosure, and it is the reason industry level monthly numbers exist at all. This guide covers what it is, when it is due, and the two counting rules inside it that decide when money and schemes are recognised. It is not investment advice.

What does the MCR requirement say?

Paragraph 6.20 of the SEBI Master Circular for Mutual Funds sits under Part II of the disclosures and reporting chapter, headed Reports, and that placement is the point. Everything in Part I, including the portfolio disclosure, faces investors. Part II faces the Board.

The MCR shall be submitted to the Board as per Format No. 3D by the 3rd working day of each month, by way of an email to SEBI's designated mutual fund data address. Compliance officers of AMCs must take due care while submitting MCR data and confirm that the data submitted is correct and does not require any revision.

The two counting rules worth knowing

Investee scheme exclusion. Where a mutual fund scheme invests a percentage of its AUM in schemes of the same mutual fund or of other mutual funds, the investing scheme must exclude the investments in those investee schemes while reporting AUM data in the MCR. Without that rule, a rupee held through a fund of funds would be counted at both levels and industry AUM would be overstated.

Allotment month recognition. Details of new schemes launched are reported in the MCR for the month in which allotment is done. The Master Circular gives its own example: if a new fund offer closes in July and allotment is done in August, the scheme is reported in the August MCR, submitted to the Board by 3 September. So the month a scheme opened and the month it first appears in the data are different months whenever an NFO straddles a month end. For what an NFO is, see what is a mutual fund NFO.

What else travels with the MCR?

Two things.

An additional report on overseas investment by mutual funds in ADRs, GDRs, foreign securities and overseas exchange traded funds is provided in Format No. 3I. And where schemes participate in exchange traded commodity derivatives, the total exposure to ETCDs is disclosed as a line item in the MCR, which is the ETCD reporting route that runs alongside the requirement that the format of the monthly portfolio statement reflect ETCD investment.

The MCR is one of several regulator facing reports in the same chapter. A separate one, the New Scheme Report, is submitted within 10 working days from the date of allotment in Format No. 3A.

MCR vs the monthly portfolio disclosure

They are both monthly and they are otherwise unalike.

The practical consequence for anyone working with Indian fund data is simple. Holdings level analysis comes from the public monthly portfolio file, covered in what is a monthly portfolio disclosure and read column by column in how to read a mutual fund portfolio statement. The MCR is where fund level and industry level monthly figures originate, and it is filed, not published. For the wider calendar these two sit inside, see mutual fund disclosure timelines.