Four balanced advantage funds, head to head in 2026

Same label, different machines

A balanced advantage fund moves money between shares and bonds as its model dictates. SEBI's category sets almost no limits on how, so two funds with the label can behave very differently. Here are four of them side by side, all Direct plan, Growth option:

• Aditya Birla Sun Life Balanced Advantage, the largest of the four
• Baroda BNP Paribas Balanced Advantage
• quant Dynamic Asset Allocation, launched April 2023
• WhiteOak Capital Balanced Advantage, launched February 2023

Returns and risk are computed from daily NAVs to Friday 9 October 2026. Holdings are from each house's portfolio disclosure for 30 September 2026.

Size, cost and exit rules

AUM is AMFI's quarterly average across all plans. The expense ratios are the direct-plan figures filed on 7 and 8 October; the exit loads, minimums and riskometer levels come from each scheme's summary document.

quant is the odd one out on cost: 1.55% a year is 0.63 points more than Baroda BNP Paribas and 0.72 more than WhiteOak. It is also the only one of the four whose assets shrank this year, from ₹953 crore in January to March to ₹866 crore.

Returns and risk

Returns over a year are annualised. Volatility is the annualised standard deviation of daily returns; beta is measured against the Nifty 50 TRI over 36 months, where 1.0 means moving one for one with the index. The category median covers 36 Direct Growth funds over one year and 30 for the three-year columns.

All four beat the category median over three years, and they did it in a market that gave little help: the Nifty 50 price index, which leaves out dividends, rose 4.89% a year over the same three years.

The interesting column is beta. Aditya Birla Sun Life and WhiteOak behaved like funds with about 60% of an index fund's sensitivity to the market. quant, at 0.96, moved almost one for one with the Nifty. Its three-year return is the highest of the four, and so is its worst fall, roughly twice Aditya Birla Sun Life's.

2026 in three legs

The year so far has had two falls and one rally. Measuring each fund across them shows the cushion directly.

In the first fall, Aditya Birla Sun Life lost less than half as much as the Nifty 50. quant lost 84% as much. In the rally all four kept pace with the Nifty 50, and none matched the broader Nifty 500. In the second fall the spread narrowed: every fund lost between 3.44% and 5.50%. Only Aditya Birla Sun Life is up for the year.

What they hold

Read the equity column with care. It is gross equity as the disclosure lists it, and a fund that hedges part of its shares with futures holds less market risk than the figure suggests. Aditya Birla Sun Life's sheet carries a margin line for derivative positions, a sign of hedged stock, and its beta of 0.62 is well below what 78.93% in shares would suggest. Beta is the better guide to how much equity each fund actually runs.

quant's portfolio is a different kind of fund. Its eleven stocks include five at about 9% to 10% each: Aurobindo Pharma, Bharti Airtel, Adani Green Energy, Adani Enterprises and Indus Towers. Outside its stocks it holds one office REIT at 8.70%, Reliance Industries futures at 7.33%, units of quant's own arbitrage fund at 3.60%, Treasury bills and cash. The other three spread their equity across 61 to 112 stocks, with their largest holdings at 3.09% to 6.97%.

Who runs them

The latest summary documents name four managers at Aditya Birla Sun Life, led by Mohit Sharma, on the fund since April 2017. Baroda BNP Paribas dates two of its four, Jitendra Sriram and Kushant Arora, from 1 July 2026, so most of this fund's record predates them. quant lists seven, with Sandeep Tandon among those there since launch. WhiteOak Capital names five, with Ramesh Mantri there since launch.

The pairs

Each pairing has its own page, with growth of ₹100 on one chart, returns over every window, risk, cost and portfolio overlap:

• Aditya Birla SL vs Baroda BNP Paribas
• Aditya Birla SL vs quant
• Aditya Birla SL vs WhiteOak Capital
• Baroda BNP Paribas vs quant
• Baroda BNP Paribas vs WhiteOak Capital
• WhiteOak Capital vs quant

What this does not tell you

Three years is short. Two of the four have no longer record, and three years is one market cycle at most.

The equity dial moves. A balanced advantage fund's model can change its equity level within weeks; September's portfolio is one snapshot. Our guide to hybrid and balanced advantage funds explains how these models work.

Tax follows the portfolio. Whether a fund is taxed as equity depends on its gross equity staying above 65%; how hybrid funds are taxed has the rules.

None of this is a recommendation. For the whole category, see the balanced advantage fund page and our October look at the category. If you plan to draw an income from one, the SWP calculator shows how long a corpus lasts.