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Executive Insights


Sionline's Executive Insights provide timely and informative commentaries on topics critical to the fund business. Written by Strategic Insight's research team, they draw from our published reports, client work, and observations of recent trends and news in the industry.

Subscribers can select from the latest Insights below or from the list of all Executive Insights.

All reports are in PDF format [download Acrobat Reader]


Fund Managers Focusing on Intermediary Sales: Trends in the Use of Share Class Pricing and Distribution Channels      4/17/2008
  This Executive Insight report presents a summary of findings on share class pricing and distribution channel trends from our survey of fund managers focused on intermediary sales. The firms that participated in our survey included virtually all the large companies that distribute primarily through financial advisors, as well many smaller intermediary-distributed firms and several bank fund families.
   
Benchmarking the Management Fees of Sub-Advised Funds      2/12/2008
  Sub-advised funds already hold $1.7 trillion in assets and investment management outsourcing by fund companies continues to expand. In this report, we present the results of our study comparing management fees of sub-advised funds to those of non-subadvised funds. We found sub-advised funds to be consistently structured with somewhat higher management fees. The universe for our analysis included all sub-advised funds, whether traditional open-end or variable annuity-underlying. Another theme we focus on in the article is “retained advisory fees” within sub-advised funds and how they change over time and across investment categories.
   
A Perspective on Stock Mutual Fund Redemption Patterns      1/21/2008
  The recent sharp declines in stock prices worldwide and the possibility of further market deterioration may once again lead to apprehensions about an elevation in stock mutual fund redemptions and their impact on specific fund management companies and the financial system overall. Against this backdrop, we wanted to share with our readers once again the reassuring empirical evidence suggesting that redemption spikes after stock market price declines have historically been limited in scope and short-lived.
   
Retirement Investments in Mutual Funds: An Update      10/30/2006
  In this Executive Insight report, we review new investments and flows coming into mutual funds from retirement investors. Included as a supplement to the report is a historical summary of the “Sources of Mutual Fund Assets and Flows”, since 1998, by type of account (DC, IRA, VA, and taxable) and type of investment. Much of this base data is sourced from the results of ICI’s annual survey of retirement statistics. We also discuss average asset allocation and account balances within the most common type of DC plan — 401(k) plans — besides touching on regulations proposed by the DOL just recently to implement certain provisions of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 relating to default investments.
   
A Status Report on the Use of Performance-Based Fees in Mutual Funds      2/10/2006