CHENNAI, May 7: ITI Pioneer Asset Mangement Company (AMC) is considering the changing of its name to Kothari Pioneer AMC. The Madras-based Kothari Pioneer Mutual Fund, whose funds the Asset Management Company manages has nine schemes as of now.

The Kothari Pioneer Mutual Fund has also finalised its plans for its tenth scheme, the Kothari Pioneer Income Builder Account. The initial issue period is likely to be June 2 - 23, the AMC's Vice President Marketing Prem Khatri told The Financial Express on Tuesday.

The AMC has set itself a Rs 20 crore target for the income builder account which is to have two options, a dividend plan and a growth plan. The AMC is to actively market its pension plan. "We plan to take its corpus to Rs 30 crore by the end of this year," said Khatri.

The Asset Mmanagement Company is very confident of providing investors with rather good returns under the pension plan scheme.

In fact the scheme's offer letter clearly states that the Asset Management Company would not be charging any investment mangement fee if the scheme's net asset value (NAV) fell below Rs 11.40 (cum dividend) as on March 31, 1998. This would indicate our confidence about investors getting yields of 14 per cent or above, said AMC senior executive marketing Hemalatha Padmanabhan.

Both Khatri and Padmanabhan admitted that the country's first money market fund, launched by Kothari Pioneer Mutual Fund had not taken off as planned. The corpus was just around Rs 70 to 80 lakhs.

Though money market schemes gave average yields of between seven and 11 per cent which were higher than what banks offered on savings and current accounts, investors had not displayed much interest due to several reasons, they maintained.

Chiefly the scheme was positioned against the savings account one held in a bank. However as of now the 30 day lock in period and the inability to issue cheques against the scheme placed the latter at a disadvantage when compared with a bank account. y

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.