Impact of SEBI’s 2025-2026 Expense Ratio Reforms on Retail Investors:A Comparative Analysis of Cost Savings, Transparency, and Fund Perfomance in Direct and Regular Plans

Author(s)	Ms Keerthi Shankar, Dr. Seranmadevi
Country	India
Abstract	This research basically looks at how SEBI’s 2025–2026 reforms moved mutual funds away from the old system where everything was crammed into one Total Expense Ratio (TER) number, and switched it to the new Base Expense Ratio (BER) model under the SEBI (Mutual Funds) Regulations, 2026. What I really wanted to dig into is this thing I started calling the “Transparency-Cost Paradox”: on paper, the management fees look cheaper because of the new BER caps, but since all the statutory taxes and levies (like GST, STT, stamp duty) are now shown separately instead of hidden, does the total amount retail investors actually end up paying go down — or does it pretty much stay the same (or even creep up a little in some cases)? The whole point is to figure out whether these changes give everyday SIP investors — people doing monthly investments, especially in places like Bengaluru, real savings in their long-term corpus, or if the biggest thing they get is just clearer visibility into where their money is actually going. In other words, is this reform genuinely putting more money back in investors’ pockets, or is it mostly about making the costs easier to understand?
Field	Mathematics > Economy / Commerce
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On	2026-03-13

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