Mutual Fund Mastery interview preparation

Indian AMCs, distributors, registrars and the global fund houses that hire for the same skills — covering the trust structure, NAV and cut-off rules, SEBI scheme categorisation, debt risk and the Potential Risk Class matrix, passives, costs, taxation and distribution. Every question is either traced to a named firm from a public candidate report, or tagged at desk level when we could not trace it; we do not invent attributions.

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100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions
100
Traced to a firm
32
Firms
19
Updated
September 2026
Asked at
All firmsVanguard5BlackRock3Franklin Templeton3Invesco3PIMCO3Fidelity Investments2J.P. Morgan2Morningstar2Neuberger Berman2Schroders2T. Rowe Price2Amundi1BNY Mellon1Goldman Sachs1Man Group1Northern Trust1State Street1Sycamore Partners1Wellington Management1
Topic
All topicsFund structure and regulation7NAV and operations6Scheme categorisation4Equity schemes5Debt schemes7Risk, liquidity and disclosure7Index funds and ETFs6Hybrid and solution schemes3Costs, plans and commissions6SIP and investor mechanics5Performance measurement6Taxation5Distribution, compliance and NISM5Portfolio construction and advice5Estimation and numeracy5Markets and industry6Career and fit12
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  1. 008What makes up a NAV?NAV and operationsCoretechnicalMan GroupEquity Hedge · Boston · 2019

    Say this

    Market value of all the scheme's assets, plus receivables, minus all liabilities and accrued expenses, divided by the number of units outstanding. The two things people forget are the accrued expenses — the TER is charged daily, not annually — and that units outstanding changes every day in an open-ended fund.

    Then walk it

    1. Assets: securities at market value, cash and bank balances, accrued interest and dividend receivable, and receivables on trades done but not settled.
    2. Liabilities: payables on unsettled purchases, redemption payable, and the accrued portion of the expense ratio, management fee, audit fee, custody and RTA charges.
    3. Divide by units outstanding at the end of the day, after the day's creations and cancellations. In an open-ended scheme there is no fixed unit count — units come into existence when money comes in.
    4. The daily accrual of expenses is the bit that trips people. A 1.8 percent TER is charged as roughly one basis point every business day, so NAV is always net of fees. There is no separate fee deduction from your folio.
    5. Rounding conventions matter in practice: liquid and debt scheme NAVs are published to four decimals, equity to two. On a liquid fund earning 6 percent a year, the fourth decimal is real money for a treasury investor.
    6. The limitation: NAV is only as honest as the valuation of the assets. For listed equity it is a closing price and beyond argument. For an unlisted or thinly traded bond it is a model or an agency price, and that is where NAV disputes live.

    Where candidates lose it

    Giving the formula and stopping. Add the accrued expense line and the moving unit count, and name the valuation weakness on illiquid debt. A candidate who says 'NAV is assets minus liabilities over units' has answered a textbook; one who says 'and that is why an illiquid debt NAV is an estimate' has answered the question.

    Expect next

    • Whose NAV is wrong if a bond in the portfolio has not traded for three weeks?
    • How often is the expense ratio charged?
    • By when must an AMC publish NAV?

    Reported by candidates at Man Group (Equity Hedge, Boston, 2019). Source: Wall Street Oasis.

Firm tags come from public, anonymous candidate reports on Wall Street Oasis: strong signal, not sworn testimony. Firms are named as the places a question was reported, not as partners of Fin Maverick. Answers are written for this page to show how to think out loud; they are not scripts to recite.