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When you start exploring mutual funds, the number of available schemes can feel overwhelming. Looking at just past returns often isn’t enough, and comparing funds manually across multiple parameters can be time-consuming.
This is where a mutual fund screener comes in. It helps you filter funds based on specific criteria and evaluate them in a more structured way. Instead of relying on isolated data points, you can assess consistency, risk, costs, and relative performance to make more informed decisions.
Table of Content
What is a Mutual Fund Screener?
A mutual fund screener is an online tool that helps investors filter mutual fund schemes based on a set of criteria or factors. These factors can be simple ones, like fund size, or more complex indicators like the risk-adjusted return of a fund. Here’s a list of some common filters available on a screener for a mutual fund:
Past returns over 1, 3, and 5 years
Risk ratios (like the Sharpe ratio and standard deviation)
Performance comparison with the benchmark
Performance comparison with peers
Category averages
Expense ratios
So, instead of having to go through all this info scheme by scheme, an MF screener tool helps automate the process. In other words, mutual fund screener tools help you shortlist MF schemes that meet your unique investment requirements across the selected filters.
How to Use a Mutual Fund Screener Tool?
Understanding what a mutual fund screener tool isn’t enough. The real value lies in understanding how to use it to potentially narrow down your options more efficiently. Here’s how you can use a mutual fund screener tool online:
Step 1: Define Your Investment Objective and Risk Tolerance
Before choosing a screener for mutual funds, you need to have a few things straight:
Investment goals: Figure out why you’re investing. Are you investing for retirement? Or, to buy a home? Or, to fund your kid’s college education? Whatever the reason, have your goals clearly set. This will help you tailor your approach better and link the goal to the investment you make.
Time horizon: Is your goal long-term, short-term, or medium-term? Short-term could be considered as 1-3 years and may need a capital preservation-heavy strategy, while long-term ones are like over 7 years away, meaning you can potentially take more risks.
Risk tolerance: Focus on understanding your current financial standing, income stability, and financial commitment. Then ask yourself about your comfort with market ups and downs. If you are a high-risk investor, you may be willing to tolerate more market volatility for potentially higher returns. But if you’re a low-risk investor, you may prefer relative stability and modest returns.
These fundamentals will help you select the right filtering criteria in the MF screener tool.
Step 2: Choose a Mutual Fund Screener Tool
Next, you need to select a tool for mutual fund screening. Now, there are several free mutual fund screener tools available on financial websites and aggregator platforms. A good mutual fund screener tool will usually tick all the following points:
Easy to use and simple to operate
Good depth of data available
Customisation options available
Can be accessed on a laptop and smartphone
Step 3: Select Your Primary Filtering Criteria
After selecting a preferred mutual fund screener tool, you can start by selecting your fund category. This means choosing from equity, debt, hybrid, and other types of MF scheme categories. Remember, this selection should match your key fundamentals (goal, time horizon, and risk).
Once you’ve selected the fund type, you can add the following filters depending on your requirements:
Expense ratio
Fund size
Sub-categories (like flexi-cap, multi-cap, large-cap, and index funds under the equity category)
Once you apply these filters and hit ‘search’, the MF screener tool will show you the list of shortlisted funds as per your criteria.
Step 4: Add Secondary Filters
After the preliminary filters, you can also add secondary filters to further narrow down the mutual fund screener’s results:
| Filter | What It Shows |
| Past Returns | How the fund has performed over different time periods (1Y, 3Y, 5Y, etc.) |
| Risk Level | Indicates how volatile the fund is (low, moderate, high) |
| Performance vs Benchmark | Compares fund returns with its benchmark index |
| Performance vs Peers | Compares the fund with others in the same category |
| Portfolio Concentration | Shows how investments are distributed across stocks/sectors |
| Risk Ratios | Metrics like the Sharpe ratio, standard deviation, etc. |
| Category Averages | Average returns and risk metrics of similar funds |
| Investment Style | Whether the fund follows a growth, value, blend, or passive strategy |
| Expense Ratio | The annual cost of managing the fund |
Step 5: Analyse the Shortlisted Funds
Once you’ve shortlisted a few funds, take some time to understand how they actually work. Look at simple but important aspects like:
Portfolio mix: How the fund is spread across equity, debt, or other assets
Investment objective: What the fund is trying to achieve
Fund manager’s experience: Whether the manager has handled different market phases well
Sector exposure: Whether the fund is well-diversified or concentrated in a few sectors
Benchmark: The index the fund is compared against
You will find all this information in the Scheme Information Document of the fund. You can access the fund’s SID through the AMC’s website.
How Does a Mutual Fund Screener Help Investors?
When you’re looking at mutual funds, the biggest challenge is not finding data - it’s making sense of it. There’s too much of it, and not all of it matters equally.
A mutual fund screener helps you cut through that noise. Instead of jumping from one scheme to another, you can filter funds based on what you actually care about and narrow things down faster.
Here’s where it becomes useful:
Saves time: You don’t have to go through dozens of funds one by one
Helps you stay relevant: You can filter funds based on your time horizon, risk level, or category
Gives you better context: You’re not just looking at returns, but other factors too.
Makes comparisons easier: You can see how a fund stacks up against its benchmark and similar funds
Helps you notice costs: Expense ratios become easier to compare across options
At the end of the day, it just makes the process more manageable and a lot less scattered.
Conclusion
A mutual fund screener is not a shortcut to picking a fund. It’s more like a starting point that helps you organise your options.
Once you have a smaller list, you still need to look deeper into what each fund is doing and whether it fits into your portfolio. But using a screener makes that first step a lot clearer and more structured.
Disclaimer
An Investor Education and Awareness Initiative by Tata Mutual Fund.
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This communication is a part of the investor education and awareness initiative of Tata Mutual Fund.
*Mutual Fund Investments are subject to market risks, please read all scheme related documents carefully.
