Liquid fund are money market mutual funds and invest primarily in money market instruments like treasury bills, certificate of deposits and commercial papers and term deposits, with the objective of providing investors an opportunity to earn returns, without compromising on the liquidity of the investment. Typically they invest in money market securities that have a residual maturity of less than or equal to 91 days. This helps the fund managers of liquid funds in meeting the redemption demand from the investors.

Liquid funds provide a better alternative to investors who keep their surplus money parked in a savings bank account. While savings bank accounts typically pay interest rates in the range of 4 to 5%, liquid funds can potentially give much higher returns. Compared to other mutual fund categories, these funds have very low risk. Key benefits of liquid funds are:-

1. High liquidity:

   Liquid funds do not have any exit load. Therefore, they can be redeemed any time after investment without any penalty.

2. Higher returns than savings bank:

   Liquid funds give higher returns than savings bank. Savings bank interest rate is around 4%, whereas liquid funds can give higher returns by at least a few percentage points. The returns of liquid funds rise when bond yields rise and fall when bond yield, but they can always provide higher returns than savings bank

3. Low volatility:

   Liquid funds are less volatile than longer term debt funds, since the underlying securities in their investment portfolio have short durations. Fixed income securities with short durations or maturities have lower interest rate risk, since the probability of the interest rates changing before the maturity of the securities is lower.