Asset management company ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund has announced the launch of the country's first silver ETF that will invest in physical silver and silver-related instruments.
The new fund offer (NFO) will open for subscription on January 5 and conclude on January 19, documents showed.
Further, a bunch of asset management companies are queuing up their silver ETFs for launch and have filed documents with markets regulator Sebi for approval in this regard.
HDFC Mutual Fund, Nippon India Mutual Fund, Mirae Asset Investment Managers, Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company and DSP Mutual Fund are among fund houses that have applied for silver ETFs.
This comes after Sebi in November issued operating norms for the introduction of silver ETFs. Under the rules, these ETFs have to invest at least 95 per cent of their net assets in silver and silver-related instruments.
The ICICI Prudential Silver ETF is an open ended scheme that will track the domestic prices of silver. The scheme will invest its proceeds in physical silver and silver-related instruments.
The investment objective of the scheme is to generate returns that are in line with the performance of physical silver in domestic prices as derived from the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) AM fixing prices.
Unlike holding physical silver, the fund house said that an investor can benefit from investing in silver ETFs as it provides more liquidity and less storage cost.
"We believe silver ETF will be one of the preferred ways for investors to take exposure to silver as one need not worry about the bulky nature of silver, purity, quality or liquidity of the investment," Chintan Haria, Head Product and Strategy, at ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, said.
He, further, said that silver is among the preferred option globally when it comes to investing in precious metals. This is because silver is considered as a store of value, hedge against inflation and has very limited co-relation with other asset classes.
On Thursday, DSP Mutual Fund filed the draft scheme information document with Sebi for DSP Silver ETF -- an open-ended exchange traded fund replicating tracking domestic prices of the precious metal.
