Fund Sales: From Stealth to Open Play
Here is the translation of the provided text into English: Recently, the latest data on the scale of public mutual fund sales institutions has been released.
Compared to the past, there have been new changes in the statistical approach of this data.
We have learned from the industry that, for the first time, the data statistics have separately listed the scale of equity index funds.
In addition to the traditional active equity funds, namely ordinary equity funds and hybrid funds, equity index funds have also been included as a statistical item in the scale of equity funds.
Against the backdrop of the rise in the scale of bonds and index funds and the decline in the scale of active equity funds in the first half of the year, different institutions have seen differences in their holdings.
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According to the public data released by the China Securities Investment Fund Association (hereinafter referred to as "CIFA"), among the three major distribution channels, the bank channel still leads in non-monetary funds and active equity funds, while the securities firms and third-party e-commerce channels have certain advantages in equity index funds.
In the competition among leading institutions, Ant Fund has comprehensively surpassed sales institutions such as China Merchants Bank and Tiantian Fund.
From the perspective of non-monetary fund holdings, the bank channel still leads by a large margin.
The data shows that the bank's holdings are 4 trillion yuan, the third-party e-commerce channel is 3 trillion yuan, and the securities firms are 1.6 trillion yuan.
Looking at the holdings of equity funds, securities firms have approached banks.
In terms of active equity funds, banks are still the main force, with holdings of 2.1 trillion yuan, e-commerce is 1.3 trillion yuan, and securities firms are less than 1.2 trillion yuan.
In terms of equity index funds, the securities channel has won overall, with holdings of 772.9 billion yuan, banks are 133.8 billion yuan, and e-commerce is 434.4 billion yuan.
Based on the existing data, one can also glimpse the fixed-income battlefield hidden behind the equity data.
Bond funds were the main force in the growth of public mutual fund scale in the first half of the year.
By subtracting the holdings of equity funds from the holdings of non-monetary funds, one can determine the holdings of bond funds, QDII funds, FOF, alternative investments, and other varieties.
Since bond funds account for a large proportion of this, they can be roughly regarded as the holdings of bond funds.
In the battlefield dominated by bond funds, banks lead with 1.924 trillion yuan, followed by third-party channels with 1.736 trillion yuan, while the securities channel only has 42.9 billion yuan, lagging behind relatively.
It is worth mentioning that many institutions that rank behind in equity fund holdings have stood out in the PK of bond funds.
These include Industrial Bank, Ping An Bank, Tengyuan Fund, Ningbo Bank, Jiyu Fund, Huicheng Fund, Postal Savings Bank, etc.
Further sorting out the internal situation of banks and securities channels reveals that China Merchants Bank still occupies a leading position in the bank channel, while other banks have different focuses in different business segments.
In the securities channel, the focus of fund sales is more or less the same, with a general emphasis on equity index funds.
The institutions with relatively larger holdings are CITIC Securities and Huatai Securities.
Ant Fund leads comprehensively in the ranking of equity funds.
Ant Fund's scale of 692 billion yuan far exceeds that of other channels, 48% higher than the second-placed China Merchants Bank's scale of 467.8 billion yuan, and twice that of the third-placed Tiantian Fund.
First, looking from the perspective of active equity funds, the scale of Ant Fund and China Merchants Bank is actually not much different.
Both giants have not been able to avoid the reduction in the scale of active equity funds.
Among them, Ant Fund's holdings decreased from 459.2 billion yuan at the end of last year to 427.3 billion yuan, and China Merchants Bank decreased from 502.8 billion yuan to 425.7 billion yuan, with China Merchants Bank's decline being somewhat larger.
Some industry insiders believe that hybrid funds include some hybrid funds with a higher proportion of bonds and some flexible allocation funds.
For Ant Fund, which has more users with a low risk preference, the scale growth of these funds has also to some extent offset the shrinkage of equity funds.
In the disclosed scale of equity index fund holdings for the first time, Ant Fund has a larger lead compared to other institutions.
The data shows that Ant Fund's holdings are 264.7 billion yuan, while China Merchants Bank only has 41.9 billion yuan.
Some public mutual fund e-commerce channel insiders revealed that during the bull market of funds from 2019 to 2021, the scale of Ant Fund's equity index funds and active equity funds soared simultaneously, and the holdings of equity index funds reached around 300 billion yuan quite early.
Taking the previously popular China Merchants Zhongzheng Baijiu Index Fund as an example, the total scale of this fund reached nearly 100 billion yuan at its peak.
Industry insiders believe that under the condition of sluggish growth of active equity funds, Ant Fund has laid out in the index fund field earlier and faster, thus seizing the opportunity.
For traditional channels such as China Merchants Bank, some funds with a three-year lock-up period have been opened successively, resulting in significant customer losses, which has also affected the advancement of newly issued active equity funds.
In the battlefield of bond funds, the advantage of Ant Fund is more prominent.
Ant's holdings are 659.2 billion yuan, China Merchants Bank is 394.4 billion yuan, Industrial Bank is 379 billion yuan, and Tiantian Fund is 208.7 billion yuan.
Why is Tiantian Fund lagging behind?
In the third-party e-commerce channel, Ant Fund is increasingly occupying an absolute leading position.
Tengyuan Fund has a place in bond funds, while Jiyu Fund and Huicheng Fund have emerged as a dark horse in institutional business.
Although Tiantian Fund still has a significant advantage in active equity funds, the decline in holdings is larger, and the gap with Ant Fund is widening.
At the end of the first quarter of 2021, CIFA disclosed the holdings data of fund sales institutions for the first time, and Ant Fund and Tiantian Fund ranked first and second in the third-party e-commerce channel, which is the same as now, but the gap in the scale of holdings is far from as large as it is now.
The latest data shows that in terms of equity index funds, Tiantian Fund's holdings are less than one-third of Ant Fund's; in terms of active equity funds, Tiantian Fund ranked third at the end of last year with 402.9 billion yuan, but the scale of active equity funds shrank by 140.3 billion yuan to 262.6 billion yuan in the first half of the year, lagging behind ICBC's 310.5 billion yuan; looking at the total amount of non-monetary funds, in the past three and a half years, Tiantian Fund has grown from 432.4 billion yuan to 552 billion yuan, an increase of 28%, while Ant Fund has grown from 890.1 billion yuan to 1,351.2 billion yuan, an increase of 52%.
According to the 2024 semi-annual report disclosed by East Money (300059.SZ), Tiantian Fund's operating income in the first half of the year was 1.417 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30%; net profit was 64 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%.
Looking at the sales situation, the number of fund transactions of Tiantian Fund in the first half of the year was 86.03 million transactions, a year-on-year decrease of 14%, and the total sales amount was 851.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4%; the transaction amount of non-monetary funds was 54.32 million transactions, a year-on-year decrease of 30%, and the corresponding sales amount was 499.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of less than 1%.
From the above data, although the transaction activity of Tiantian Fund in the first half of the year has declined significantly, the impact on the total sales amount is limited, and the net profit has increased.