The Mutual Funds Whose Riskometer Quietly Changed

FinSet stores two riskometer values for each scheme. The label it carries today and the label it carried at launch, both lifted from the scheme's AMFI Scheme Summary Document. Across roughly 2,000 schemes where both values exist, 515 now sit at a different rung from where they began. Every one of those is a number the fund house itself has disclosed under a SEBI mandate. No platform collects them in one place.

Why a Risk Label Moves at All #

Before 2021 the riskometer was a category label. Every fund in a SEBI category was simply handed that category's risk level. SEBI circular SEBI/HO/IMD/DF3/CIR/P/2020/197 dated 5 October 2020 replaced that approach, effective 1 January 2021, with a fund-level riskometer recalculated every month from the scheme's actual portfolio at the end of the previous month.

Two consequences follow directly. Two funds in the same category can now carry different labels. A single fund's label can move from one month to the next as its holdings change. Drift is the designed behaviour of the metric, not a malfunction.

The same circular sets the disclosure that makes this aggregation possible. AMCs must evaluate the riskometer monthly and publish it within 10 days of each month-end on their own website and the AMFI website. Any change has to reach unitholders through a Notice cum Addendum plus an email or SMS. The scheme's annual report must also state how many times the riskometer changed during the year.

What the Riskometer Actually Measures #

The label drifts because the portfolio behind it drifts. Under the 2020 framework an equity scheme's risk value is the average of three things, the market capitalisation of its holdings, their volatility and their impact cost, which is a measure of how liquid they are. A fund tilting toward smaller companies, more volatile stocks or thinly traded names scores higher on its own, with no decision by the fund manager to "take more risk".

A debt scheme's risk value is the average of credit risk, interest-rate risk measured by Macaulay Duration and liquidity risk, with one override. When liquidity risk is higher than that average it becomes the risk value outright. That override is why credit-heavy debt funds jumped on the riskometer after April 2020, when Franklin Templeton wound up six debt schemes and froze redemptions across the segment. Cash and equivalents sit at the floor of the scale.

The 2021 Rule Change, Decoded #

The single largest source of apparent drift is the scale itself. The old riskometer in force until the end of 2020 had five levels. The one that replaced it on 1 January 2021 has six. Two of those levels are new and one was removed.

So a scheme launched years ago can read differently today purely because the ruler changed. The two biggest single moves in the whole dataset both land on a brand-new label. 158 schemes moved from Moderate to Low to Moderate, a rung that did not exist before 2021. 77 moved from Moderately High to Very High, a rung that also did not exist before 2021. Neither is evidence on its own that a portfolio became safer or riskier.

SEBI never published an official map from the old five labels to the new six, so a pre-2021 launch label and a 2026 label are not strictly read off the same ruler. That is why FinSet's clean comparison is built only from the 164 schemes that launched after 1 January 2021. Those have lived their whole life on the six-level scale.

The Funds That Reached Very High #

Of the 164 schemes launched on the new scale, 42 read higher than at launch and 21 of those climbed all the way to Very High, the top of the scale. Because every fund here started life on the six-level ruler, this is a genuine same-scale move, not a relabelling artefact.

Two patterns stand out. A whole cluster of silver ETFs and their fund-of-fund versions, across Aditya Birla Sun Life, Axis, Nippon India and ICICI Prudential, moved from Moderately High to Very High in 2022 as the riskometer's treatment of commodity exposure took hold. A run of balanced advantage funds, from SBI, Mirae Asset, PGIM India, NJ and Mahindra Manulife, drifted up to Very High despite the word balanced in the name. Even these moves can reflect the monthly calculation catching up to the real portfolio rather than a deliberate change of strategy. The same calculation can move a fund back down the next month.

Drift Runs Both Ways #

More schemes read lower than at launch than higher, 291 against 224. The biggest single move of all is Moderate to Low to Moderate, 158 schemes, which once again is the finer post-2021 scale dropping a fund one notch into a level that did not exist before. Inside the clean post-2021 set, 122 of the 164 read lower than launch.

A falling riskometer is not automatically reassuring. It usually means the portfolio shifted toward larger companies, shorter duration or stronger credit. The number describes the portfolio. It does not pass judgement on it, in either direction.

What a Change Actually Signals #

The riskometer is a relative, point-in-time disclosure of a scheme's current portfolio risk. It is not a forecast of returns or losses and it is not a recommendation. Because it is recomputed every month, it can oscillate, so one month's move is a data point and not a verdict.

The regulator clearly treats a change as material. A move triggers a direct notice to every unitholder. The annual report carries a count of how many times it changed during the year. Since December 2024 a fund must show the existing and the revised riskometer side by side, under SEBI circular SEBI/HO/IMD/PoD1/CIR/P/2024/150 dated 5 November 2024. What the number was never built to tell anyone is whether a fund fits a particular goal or holding period. That sits outside the riskometer entirely.

How We Built This #

FinSet keeps every scheme's riskometer at launch and its current riskometer, both taken from the AMFI Scheme Summary Documents, along with the date each current label was published. The figures on this page are a snapshot of the June 2026 documents and will shift as funds file fresh monthly values. Where a scheme launched before 2021 its launch label sits on the old five-level scale, so FinSet flags those separately and draws the named Very High list only from post-2021 launches. The riskometer is one disclosed field among many that FinSet keeps dated and in the open.

This page is investor education, not investment advice. FinSet is an AMFI-registered mutual fund distributor, ARN 180462.

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