Canadian mutual funds suffer in September

A look at the latest statistics from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) paints a picture of pain for the country’s mutual-fund space.

Long-term funds saw total net redemptions of $1.382 billion in September. Net outflows were reported in balanced funds (-$349 million), equity funds (-$277 million), and bond funds (-$1.022 billion), which were only partly offset by net inflows into specialty funds ($266 million).

Money market funds also experienced net redemptions last month as investors pulled out $168 million from the category. All told, the industry shed a total of $1.55 billion.

Year-to-date sales figures provided little consolation, with most categories posting declines when compared with numbers from 2017:

The only categories that showed increases in year-to-date sales relative to 2017 were specialty funds (15.7%) and money market funds (345%).

Looking from an AUM perspective, total industry assets totalled $1.52 trillion in September, representing a decreased of $13.3 billion or 0.9% compared to August.

Focusing on long-term funds, balanced-fund assets declined from $788.2 billion to $780.9 billion. Assets in equity funds slid from $516.4 to $512.2 billion, while those in bond funds dropped from $188.3 billion to $186.6 billion. Specialty funds, meanwhile, posted a slight increase from $17.2 billion to $17.4 billion.

All in all, the long-term fund space saw its assets shrink from around $1.5101 trillion to $1.4971 trillion. Money market fund assets, on the other hand, inched lower from $25.5 billion to $25.4 billion.

September was kinder to the Canadian ETF space, which saw net new assets of $716 million. But with $163 billion in AUM, according to the latest figures from the Canadian ETF Association, it’s still a small player relative to the mutual-fund industry.

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