Aditya Birla SL Savings Fund has outperformed its peers in the ultra-short-duration mutual fund category with a 7.2% three-year CAGR. The fund, managing over Rs 19,600 crore, also beat its benchmark by 0.8 percentage points. Investors often use these funds for short-term money management, making consistency across different time horizons an important factor to track.
What Happened
Aditya Birla SL Savings Fund has emerged as a top performer in the ultra-short-duration mutual fund category. Based on data compiled as of June 24, 2026, the fund delivered a three-year compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.2%. This analysis focuses on funds with assets under management (AUM) exceeding Rs 1,500 crore to ensure a comparison among significant market participants.
Performance Against Benchmark
Beyond ranking ahead of peers like Mirae Asset Ultra Short Duration Fund and HSBC Ultra Short Duration Fund, the Aditya Birla fund has shown steady performance against its benchmark index. Over the three-year period, the fund outperformed its benchmark by 0.8 percentage points, with the benchmark returning 6.4%. This gap was more pronounced in the one-year timeframe, where the fund outperformed its benchmark by 2.0 percentage points, as the benchmark returned 4.2%.
How Performance Varies
While the three-year figures show a strong long-term trend, returns can fluctuate depending on the time window analyzed. For example, in shorter periods like one-month and three-month windows, Mirae Asset Ultra Short Duration Fund led the category, delivering 1.0% and 2.0% returns respectively. This variation highlights the dynamic nature of fund performance, showing that a fund excelling in long-term gains may not necessarily maintain the same lead over every short-term duration.
The Scale of the Fund
The Aditya Birla SL Savings Fund currently holds the largest corpus among the top five qualifying funds in this segment, with assets under management totaling Rs 19,611.3 crore. Other notable funds in this category include the ICICI Pru Ultra Short Term Fund and the Bandhan Ultra Short Duration Fund. The size of a fund's AUM is often monitored by investors to gauge the scale at which the fund manager operates within short-term debt markets.
What Investors Should Track
For those considering ultra-short-duration funds, it is often useful to look beyond a single performance window. Since these funds are typically used to park money for short periods, investors may track the consistency of returns across various horizons, such as one month, one year, and three years. Additionally, observing how funds perform relative to their specific benchmarks helps in understanding whether the fund manager is consistently generating value above the market average.