SIP stoppage ratio of 78.53% counts plans, not investors

What does the SIP stoppage ratio actually count?

The stoppage ratio takes the SIPs discontinued or completed in a month. It divides that by the SIPs newly registered in the same month. A systematic investment plan, or SIP, is a standing instruction to invest a fixed amount on a fixed schedule.

AMFI, the Association of Mutual Funds in India, publishes the underlying counts each month on its monthly data page. Mint reported the September 2026 figures on 13 October 2026.

As of that report, the September numbers were:

• New SIP registrations: 63.26 lakh, down from 66.40 lakh in August.
• SIPs discontinued or completed: 49.68 lakh, down from 53.82 lakh in August.
• Stoppage ratio: 78.53%, against 81.05% in August and 76.27% in September 2025.

The arithmetic is short. 49.68 lakh divided by 63.26 lakh is 0.7853, which is 78.53%. For August, 53.82 lakh divided by 66.40 lakh is 0.8105, which is 81.05%.

Source: Mint, read 3 November 2026, quoting AMFI monthly data.

How should you read a ratio above or below 100%?

Below 100% means more plans started than ended. Above 100% means more ended than started. At 78.53%, September added 13.58 lakh plans on net, which is 63.26 lakh minus 49.68 lakh.

The ratio has been falling since May 2026, when it stood at 95.46%. That is the fifth consecutive monthly decline according to Mint. It still sits above the 76.27% of a year earlier, so the picture is better than May and slightly worse than a year ago.

One more number belongs next to it. Monthly SIP inflows reached ₹32,490 crore in September, against ₹32,297 crore in August and ₹29,361 crore in September 2025. The count of contributing SIP accounts was 10.06 crore.

The 10.06 crore contributing accounts are the base. The ratio describes only the month's flow of plans starting and ending around that base.

Why does the ratio mix up quitting and finishing?

The numerator holds two different events. One is an investor who stopped a plan. The other is a plan that ran its full tenure and ended exactly as designed. The ratio adds them together.

Mint states this directly: the metric does not necessarily indicate that investors are losing confidence, because it includes SIPs that completed their stipulated tenure. An investor may also close one plan while restructuring a portfolio or switching to another scheme.

Take a family that sets up a ₹25,000 monthly SIP for 36 months. Over the full term that is 36 times ₹25,000, which is ₹9,00,000 invested on schedule without a single missed cycle.

When the tenure ends, the ratio records one SIP discontinued or completed. If the family starts a fresh ₹25,000 SIP the next month, the ratio records one new registration. The discipline was unbroken the whole time, and the same family appears on both sides of the fraction.

Now take the opposite family. They registered a ₹25,000 SIP, stopped it after four cycles, and never started another. The ratio records one stoppage and no new registration. The two families look identical in the numerator, and only one of them left the habit behind.

That is the first limit of the number. It cannot tell a finished plan from an abandoned one.

The abandoned plans raise a separate question, covered in why most SIPs that stop were set too high.

What does the ratio leave out entirely?

The ratio is a count, so every plan weighs the same. A SIP of ₹500 and a SIP of ₹50,000 are each one plan. Ten plans ending because of small, short-lived instructions can move the ratio as much as ten plans carrying large monthly commitments.

It also ignores where the money went. A switch from one scheme to another closes one SIP and opens another, so the ratio sees a stoppage and a registration for a single investor who never paused.

Mint notes one more split in the September data. Folios rose to 28.62 crore, with 27.12 lakh net folios added in the month. Meanwhile assets in equity, hybrid and solution-oriented schemes held by individual investors fell from ₹51.73 lakh crore to ₹49.70 lakh crore. Participation and asset value are separate measures and they moved in different directions. The stoppage ratio belongs with participation, and it says nothing about asset value.

What is a better test of discipline than the industry ratio?

The industry ratio describes a crowd. Your own discipline is a record of your own cycles. The more useful figure is the share of scheduled instalments that actually ran, and it takes about two minutes to compute.

Three questions make a usable check:

1. How many instalments were scheduled over the last twelve months, and how many ran? A weekly SIP has 52 scheduled in a year, so 49 that ran is 94.2%.
2. For each plan you closed, did it end on its planned date, or did you stop it early?
3. For each plan you started, did it replace a closed one or add to your total monthly commitment?

The third question matters most for a portfolio. A replaced plan is rotation. An added plan is a larger commitment. A reader who answers these three for every SIP has a better measure of their own habit than any monthly national percentage.

Take ₹25,000 a month across twelve months, so ₹3,00,000 scheduled. If two instalments did not run, the amount that ran is 10 times ₹25,000, which is ₹2,50,000, or 83.3% of the plan. That figure belongs to one investor and one plan, and it is the one that changes what you do next.

How does this apply to a crypto SIP?

A Crypto SIP on Qatobit invests a set amount on a schedule the investor picks, weekly, biweekly or monthly, from the INR balance in the account. Rupee cost averaging smooths timing risk through cadence-based averaging. Market risk remains.

The same habit test applies. It asks whether the schedule ran, whether the plan was closed on purpose, and whether new plans replaced old ones or added to the total. Only the asset differs between the two.

A position built over a schedule is also a position that benefits from a periodic look at its weight in the whole portfolio. Two related pieces cover that. One is what asset allocation is and what it decides before any pick. The other is what portfolio rebalancing does when one holding falls 10 percent.

What the number can and cannot tell you

The September 2026 stoppage ratio of 78.53% is an improvement on the 95.46% of May 2026 and still above September 2025. Net SIP additions were positive, and monthly SIP inflows set a record at ₹32,490 crore, all as reported by Mint from AMFI data.

What the ratio cannot do is separate a finished plan from an abandoned one, weigh a large plan against a small one, or follow a switch. Treat it as a count of paperwork and read your own instalment record as the measure of your habit. The next question to ask is how your own plans are spread across time, which is a question about allocation and cadence rather than about the national count.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SIP stoppage ratio?

The SIP stoppage ratio is the number of SIPs discontinued or completed in a month divided by the number of new SIPs registered in that month. For September 2026 it was 78.53%, which is 49.68 lakh divided by 63.26 lakh.

Does a falling stoppage ratio mean investors are more disciplined?

Not by itself. The ratio counts plans that ended on schedule as stoppages, and it counts a switch from one scheme to another as both a stoppage and a registration. A falling ratio means new plans outnumbered ended plans by more than before, not that fewer people quit.

What does a stoppage ratio above 100% mean?

It means more SIPs were discontinued or completed than were newly registered in that month. The ratio stood at 95.46% in May 2026, close to that line, and has fallen to 78.53% as of the September 2026 data.

Where is the stoppage ratio published?

AMFI releases the monthly data, and financial media such as Mint report the ratio from it. The monthly releases are listed on the AMFI monthly data page, with the September 2026 report the latest read on 3 November 2026.

How can I measure my own SIP discipline?

Divide the instalments that ran in the last twelve months by the instalments scheduled. A weekly plan has 52 scheduled in a year, so 49 that ran is 94.2%. Then check whether each closed plan ended on its planned date and whether each new plan replaced one or added to your commitment.

Crypto investments are subject to market risk. Not financial advice.