Title: A multi-criteria-based analytical study of the impact of COVID-19 on ELSS fund performance

Authors: Sanjib Biswas; Dragan Pamucar; Jayanta Nath Mukhopadhyaya

Addresses: Decision Sciences and Operations Management Area, Calcutta Business School, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal-743503, India ' Department of Logistics, Military Academy, University of Defence, Belgrade 11000, Serbia ' Finance Area, Army Institute of Management, West Bengal 700135, India

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on the performance of select equity linked savings scheme (ELSS) funds in India for two different time periods namely June 2019 (before COVID-19) and June 2021 (after COVID-19) using risk, return and market perception based criteria. We use a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework of level based weight assessment (LBWA) and measurement of alternatives and ranking according to compromise solution (MARCOS). We test the group harmony using Kendall's concordance coefficient. We find that the result is validated and shows stability in the sensitivity analysis. To the best of our knowledge, the present work is the first of its kind that assesses the impact of COVID-19 on asset management companies (AMC) of ELSS funds from multiple perspectives. We observe that AMCs are unable to maintain their performance and ranks which suggests a highly competitive and fragmented nature of India's growing ELSS funds.

Keywords: mutual funds; ELSS schemes; COVID-19; MARCOS; level-based weight assessment; LBWA; Kendall's concordance coefficient; Wilcoxon matched pair t-test.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMDM.2022.125945

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2022 Vol.21 No.4, pp.339 - 378

Received: 10 Aug 2021
Accepted: 23 Aug 2021
Published online: 04 Oct 2022 *

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