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.

Jump to the question bank

Question bank

100 questions, mapped to the firms that asked them

Questions: 100
Traced to a firm: 32
Firms: 19
Updated: September 2026

Showing 1–1 of 1 · filtered from 100Clear filters

028A corporate treasurer has 40 crore of surplus he will need in about 45 days. Overnight fund, liquid fund or money market fund?Debt schemesIntermediatecase studyCorporate treasury desksIndian AMCs
Say this
Liquid fund, for a 45-day horizon. Overnight gives up yield for liquidity he does not need, and a money market fund holds paper out to a year, so it carries mark-to-market risk over a window this short. Liquid caps residual maturity at 91 days, which roughly matches the horizon.
Then walk it
1. Overnight funds hold one-day paper, so there is effectively no rate risk and no credit risk, but the yield is the lowest of the three. That is the right answer for money he might need tomorrow, not in 45 days.
2. Liquid funds hold paper up to 91 days residual maturity. Since the move to full mark to market the NAV does move, but with average maturity under about 60 days the sensitivity is small — a 25 basis point move costs a few basis points of NAV.
3. Money market funds can hold up to one year. That extra duration earns maybe 20 to 40 basis points more in a normal curve, but over 45 days a rate spike can wipe out more than the extra carry.
4. Watch the graded exit load on liquid funds for redemptions inside seven days, introduced after the 2019 stress. Redeeming on day 3 costs a small penalty; by day 45 it is irrelevant. Say this, because treasurers ask.
5. Then the operational detail that actually matters to a treasurer: the 1:30 pm purchase cut-off and the realisation rule. Funding by RTGS in the morning gets him the previous day's NAV; a 2 pm transfer loses a day, which on 40 crore at 6 percent is about 66,000 rupees.
6. One check before recommending: the scheme's top-10 investor concentration. A liquid fund where three corporates hold 60 percent of AUM is a fund where someone else's quarter-end redemption becomes his problem.
Where candidates lose it
Answering with the highest-yielding option. Treasury money is about certainty of principal on a known date, not yield. And if you do not mention the 1:30 pm cut-off and the seven-day exit load, an institutional sales interviewer will conclude you have never spoken to a treasurer.
Expect next
- Now he says he might need it on any day with 24 hours' notice. What changes?
- What is the exit load structure on a liquid fund?
- How would you check the fund's investor concentration?

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

Say this

Then walk it

Where candidates lose it

Expect next