Direct Plan vs Regular Plan AUM Split: How the Gap Has Widened Over the Years

Last Reviewed and Updated: 17 Aug 2026

In September 2012, SEBI ordered every mutual fund house in India to offer a direct plan alongside its regular plan, the same portfolio, the same fund manager, minus whatever commission would otherwise have gone to a distributor. Direct plans launched on January 1, 2013. For years afterward, most investors simply ignored the cheaper option.

Over a decade later, that early indifference has turned into a genuine structural shift in the industry, though the shift looks very different depending on which investor you examine underneath the headline number.

This matters for anyone choosing how to invest, not just for industry watchers. The direct versus regular split determines how much of an investor's return gets diverted into distributor commission every year, and it sits right alongside the cost debate this site has covered in the context of SEBI's April 2026 expense ratio overhaul.

But the aggregate share of direct plans in total industry assets is a more misleading number than it first appears, and understanding who has actually moved toward direct plans, and who has not, matters more than the single widely quoted percentage.

According to the AMFI CRISIL Mutual Fund Factbook 2024, direct plans accounted for 27.4% of total mutual fund industry AUM in March 2019, with regular plans holding the remaining 62.6%. By March 2024, direct plans had climbed to 41.2% of industry AUM, with regular plans down to 58.8%.

A subsequent AMFI CRISIL update put the direct share at approximately 51% by December 2024, and industry commentary through the middle of 2026 continues to describe direct plans as holding roughly that share or a little above it, suggesting the climb has continued, even if the exact current figure varies somewhat depending on the source and the precise month referenced.

Period	Direct Plan Share	Regular Plan Share
March 2019	27.4%	62.6%
March 2024	41.2%	58.8%
December 2024 onward	Roughly 45 to 51%, and climbing	Remainder, still the larger single share in most readings

A single aggregate percentage hides an important compositional fact: direct and regular plans are not drawing from the same pool of investors in anything like equal measure. Corporate investors, treasuries parking surplus cash and businesses managing working capital, have used direct plans heavily since the option existed, since they generally have in house financial expertise and never needed a distributor's guidance to select a liquid or debt fund in the first place.

As of March 2024, corporate investors accounted for 60.4% of all direct plan AUM. Retail investors and high net worth individuals, or HNIs, the two categories that make up the bulk of ordinary household investing, contribute a far smaller share of direct assets by comparison.

Flip the analysis around and look at who holds regular plan assets, and the retail preference for advice becomes clear. As of March 2024, HNIs accounted for 41.6% of regular plan AUM, retail investors 36.8%, and corporate investors only 18.1%. In other words, the investors most likely to need help choosing a fund, building an allocation, or staying invested through a downturn are also the investors most likely to still be paying for a distributor's involvement.

AMFI CRISIL's own factbook was direct about this, noting that the continued preference for regular plans among HNIs and retail investors implies a continued reliance on intermediaries, even as digital access to direct plans has become nearly frictionless.

Investor Type	Share of Direct Plan AUM	Share of Regular Plan AUM
Corporate	60.4%	18.1%
HNIs	Smaller share	41.6%
Retail	Smaller share	36.8%

Figures as of March 2024, AMFI CRISIL Mutual Fund Factbook 2024. The factbook did not separately break out the exact HNI and retail split within direct plan AUM in the figures reviewed for this article, beyond confirming corporate investors held the majority share.

Direct plans are not winning over retail India. They are winning over corporate treasuries that never needed a distributor in the first place.

The direct versus regular split also varies sharply by fund category, reflecting how much advice a particular kind of investor actually seeks. In data covering March 2020, close to 80% of assets in ETFs and fund of funds sat in direct plans, and about 72% of liquid and money market fund assets did too, both categories dominated by institutional and treasury money that rarely involves a distributor.

Equity funds told the opposite story: roughly 81% of equity assets sat in regular plans, meaning only around a fifth of equity fund money, the category most retail SIP investors actually hold, was in direct plans at all. Debt funds sat closer to the middle, roughly split. The pattern has likely narrowed somewhat since 2020 as direct adoption has broadened, but the underlying logic, that advice heavy categories like equity skew regular while treasury heavy categories like liquid funds skew direct, remains a reasonable description of the market today.

AMFI CRISIL's factbook also tracked how long money actually stays invested by plan type, and the gap is notable. As of March 2024, 21.2% of regular plan AUM had been held for more than five years, compared with just 7.7% of direct plan AUM. The same pattern showed up in SIP assets specifically: 23% of regular plan SIP AUM had a holding period beyond five years, against 12.4% for direct plan SIPs.

Some of that gap reflects the simple fact that direct plans only began in 2013 and so have a shorter maximum possible history, but AMFI CRISIL's own reading of the data attributed at least part of it to the discipline that comes from an ongoing advisory relationship, which appears to help some investors stay the course through volatile periods rather than redeeming early.

The rate of change, as distinct from the current level, still favours direct plans clearly. Individual investors' AUM in direct plans grew 43% during 2025, against 11% growth in regular plan AUM over the same period, according to AMFI data reported by Business Standard.

That is a wide enough gap to suggest the multi year climb in direct's share has not stalled, even if the underlying investor base moving toward direct remains narrower than the headline percentage implies. If that differential growth rate persists, the gap between direct and regular will keep narrowing over time, but the pace at which retail behaviour specifically changes will likely remain slower than the pace suggested by the aggregate industry number.

The financial case for switching is not in serious dispute. Under SEBI's expense ratio framework effective April 2026, the gap between a fund's regular and direct plan typically runs about 0.5 to 1 percentage point for equity funds, entirely attributable to the distributor commission built into the regular plan's cost structure, and that gap compounds meaningfully over a long holding period.

Yet more than a decade after direct plans became available, and even after that cost gap has been public knowledge for years, regular plans still hold the larger share of industry assets among the retail and HNI investors who make up most of household investing. Cost alone, it turns out, has not been sufficient to move the bulk of that money.

A cheaper plan sitting one click away has not been enough, on its own, to move most retail money. Advice, trust and habit have proven far stickier than a percentage point of fees.

A few practical conclusions follow from separating the headline percentage from what is actually driving it:

• Do not treat the aggregate direct share as a proxy for what similar retail investors are doing. Corporate and institutional money, concentrated in liquid, debt and ETF categories, explains a disproportionate share of the headline number.

• If you are comfortable selecting and monitoring your own funds, the cost case for direct plans is straightforward and compounds meaningfully over a long holding period, particularly in equity funds where the commission gap is widest.

• If you rely on a distributor or adviser for fund selection, allocation and staying invested through volatility, the AMFI CRISIL data suggests that guidance is associated with measurably longer holding periods, which itself has real value for long term compounding.

• The direct versus regular decision does not have to be binary. Many investors use direct plans for categories where they feel confident, such as index funds or funds they already understand well, while keeping more complex or unfamiliar allocations in regular plans.

• Switching an existing regular plan holding to direct is treated as a redemption and a fresh purchase for tax purposes, so weigh the capital gains impact of switching against the ongoing cost saving before making a change to a long held position.

Status as of July 2026

Historical direct versus regular AUM share figures below are drawn from the AMFI CRISIL Mutual Fund Factbook 2024, covering data through March 2024 and reported in March 2025. More recent figures, including AMFI CRISIL's own update for December 2024 and subsequent industry commentary through mid 2026, are noted where available but vary somewhat by source and exact date. Check the latest AMFI CRISIL Factbook or AMFI's monthly data for more current figures.

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