ICICI Prudential Corporate Bond Fund, the topper in the category, offered 7.60% in 2023. Aditya Birla Sun Life Corporate Bond Fund offered 7.29%. HDFC Corporate Bond Fund gave 7.20%. Nippon India Corporate Bond Fund gave 7.15%.
The category had investments of around 60.99% in AAA papers and 34.15% in sovereign rated papers. The category had around 3.59% in cash and cash equivalents. Around 0.15% was invested in AA rated papers. The corporate bond category had invested around 0.99% in A1 rated papers. Around 0.14% was invested in unrated papers that included alternative investment fund.
The corporate bond category had an allocation of around 44.71% in papers that had maturity between one to three years. The category had an allocation of 20.91% in papers that had maturity above five years. Around 20.89% was invested in papers with maturity between three to five years. Around 9.43% was invested in papers that had a maturity of 12 months. Around 4.06% was invested in papers that did not had maturity.
According to the Amfi data, the corporate bond category in 2023 witnessed a total inflow of Rs 15,486.14 crore.
The asset under management of the corporate bond category as on November 30, 2023 stands at Rs 1.39 lakh crore. The asset under management of the corporate bond category has surged by 22.51% in 2023, from Rs 1.13 lakh crore in January to Rs 1.39 lakh crore in November.
Note, the above exercise is not a recommendation. The exercise was to capture the performance of the category in 2023. One should not make investment or redemption decisions based on the above exercise.
If you are looking for recommendations, see:
Best corporate bond mutual funds to invest in 2023
Corporate bond schemes are mandated to invest at least 80% of their corpus in the highest-rated companies. This makes them relatively safer than other debt schemes such as credit risk funds. They are also safer than gilt funds and long term debt funds that are highly sensitive to interest rate changes in the economy.
