The over 30 mutual funds available on the Romanian market have managed to attract only 84 investors in the first quarter, on top of the number of investors already acquired last year, according to data from the association of fund managers, UNOPC.
This means that the 30 funds managed to convince, on average, one investor every business day to invest with their fund. In other words, each fund attracted less than one investor for every month.
The number of investors in mutual funds amounted to 78,380 in December 2006, only to reach 78,464 at the end of March 2007, according to UNOPC data. The number of investors in funds is actually lower than the figures shown in the data of the UNOPC, considering that an investor is accounted for several times if he or she invests in several different funds.
According to the UNOPC statistics, the number of investors withdrawing their investments from open-ended funds totalled 1,067 (471 of which left the equity funds and 440 the diversified funds). In addition, the number of funds that bought into other funds, which includes individuals who moved their investments from one fund to another reached 1,149, according to the same source. The managers are blaming the current conditions on the financial markets and the lack of awareness campaigns.
"The investment fund industry is growing, yet the speed at which it is progressing is different. If there was an important champion to promote investment, maybe a politician to promote investments in mutual funds, things would visibly improve," says Eugen Voicu, chairman of fund manager Certinvest.
After the problems of the SAFI and FNI deeply shook the confidence in these types of investments, Romanians still have to exclusively place their money in the trust of fund managers.
The emergence of banks on the market, which could have theoretically restored confidence in this type of investment, does not seem to have had the desired effect. There are six management companies held by banking groups on the market now.
Over the last twelve months, the number of investors in funds rose by around 5%, or 4,096 people, but this occurred amid the launch of new funds, so that the decision of some investors to diversify investments may have artificially boosted the number of investors in the recorded statistics.
The number of investors in funds is close to the number of accounts opened with brokerage firms, which the Bucharest Stock Exchange puts at 60,000-70,000, despite the fact that investment in a mutual fund is much more convenient and requires less knowledge of the financial markets.
The volatility on the stock market, which seems to generate lower yields than in the previous years has negatively affected the performance of the funds in the first quarter, in turn having an impact on the number of investors, according to the managers.
The highest number of repurchases, in terms of net investors that exited a fund were reported by the Intercapital equity fund, managed by Certinvest. With a fund unit yield of 0.6% in the first quarter, Intercapital now has 315 investors less than it did at the end of last year (3,025).
On the other hand, Raiffeisen Prosper managed by the specialist company of Raiffeisen Bank attracted 302 investors despite its negative yield in the first quarter.
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