Since 1992, a number of articles and brief essays have been published in financial dailies, periodicals, professional and
research journals, explaining the basic concept of Mutual Funds and life insurances and behavior of investors on them.
They underline the importance of mutual funds and life insurances in the Indian capital market environment. They
touch upon varied aspects like regulation of mutual funds and life insurances, investor expectations, investor safety,
trend in growth and some other critical views on the performance and functioning of mutual funds/life insurance
schemes. For cases in point, Ippolito (1992) says that fund/scheme selection by investors is based on past performance
of the funds and money flows into winning funds more rapidly than they flow out of losing funds. Gupta (1994) made a
household investor survey with the objective to provide data on the investor preferences on MFs and other financial
assets. The findings of the study were more appropriate, at that time, to the policy makers of mutual funds to design the
financial products for the future. Kulshreshta (1994) offers certain guidelines to the investors in selecting the mutual
fund schemes. Shankar (1996) points out that the Indian investors do view Mutual Funds as commodity products and
AMCs, to capture the market should follow the consumer product distribution model. Jambodekar (1996) conducted a
study to assess the awareness of MFs among investors, to identify the information sources influencing the buying
decision and the factors influencing the choice of a particular fund. The study reveals among other things that Income
Schemes and Open Ended Schemes are more preferred than Growth Schemes and Close Ended Schemes during the then
prevalent market conditions. Sikidar and Singh (1996) carried out a survey with an objective to understand the
behavioral aspects of the investors of the North Eastern region towards mutual funds investment portfolio.