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

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052Explain rupee cost averaging. Does an SIP actually beat a lump sum?SIP and investor mechanicsCoretechnicalDistribution and salesIndian AMCs
Say this
Rupee cost averaging means a fixed rupee amount buys more units when the NAV is low and fewer when it is high, so your average cost per unit ends up below the average NAV over the period. But no — on a purely financial basis a lump sum usually beats an SIP in a rising market, because the money is invested for longer.
Then walk it
1. The arithmetic: invest 10,000 at an NAV of 100 and 10,000 at 50, and you own 300 units for 20,000, an average cost of 66.7 against an average NAV of 75. That gap is the whole of rupee cost averaging, and it is a harmonic mean effect.
2. Now the honest part. Equity markets rise more often than they fall, so staying out of the market to drip money in has an opportunity cost. Studies across long Indian and US histories find lump sum wins roughly two times out of three.
3. So why do we recommend SIPs anyway? Two real reasons. First, most people invest out of monthly income and do not have a lump sum, so the comparison is academic. Second, behaviour — an SIP removes the timing decision, and the timing decision is where retail investors destroy returns.
4. There is a third reason that matters at industry level: SIP flows are sticky. That is why Indian equity funds have had a reliable monthly bid of well over 25,000 crore even in drawdowns, and it has changed the market's behaviour in corrections.
5. The one case where an SIP wins clearly on numbers is a flat or falling market over the accumulation period, and a sideways market for five years is exactly the scenario where a lump sum investor gives up.
6. For someone who does have a lump sum, my practical answer is to split it: deploy a portion immediately and stagger the rest over three to six months through an STP from a liquid fund. It gives up a little expected return to buy a lot of behavioural safety.
Where candidates lose it
Claiming an SIP produces higher returns than a lump sum as a general rule. It does not, and a good interviewer will make you prove it. The strong answer is that SIP wins on behaviour and cash flow reality, not on expected return — and then offers the STP compromise.
Expect next
- So why does the industry sell SIPs so hard?
- When would you advise a lump sum?
- How would you deploy 50 lakh?

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.

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

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Then walk it

Where candidates lose it

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