The Italian asset management market in 2015 continued to show a sustained development trend. At the end of July, assets reached a new high of 1.750 billion euros, up 10% on last December. In the first seven months of 2015, net inflows reached 105 billion, approximately 80% of the amount collected in the whole of 2014. The mutual funds sector was the driving force behind the inflows of managed assets, also in 2015. In the first seven months of the year, the net balance between subscriptions and redemptions amounted to 77 billion euro. Net inflows from portfolio management stopped at 27 billion euro.
In Italy, the distribution architecture of mutual funds is rather "closed", ie distributors tend to mainly place their own funds rather than those of third parties. About half of the products held directly by retail customers are placed by "closed" distribution networks (i.e. with a percentage of own products placed greater than 75%), only 10% of the volumes are placed by very open distributors (with a share of third-party products exceeding 75%).
Among the placement channels, there is a clear predominance of bank branches through which approximately two thirds of the total assets are sold, compared with one third placed by financial advisors. A segmentation of the market by type of customer shows that 72% of mutual fund assets are placed with mass-affluent customers and 28% with private customers.
Despite the growing degree of harmonization of Community legislation on UCITS, areas of inhomogeneity remain. One of the issues under discussion concerns the profile of incentive (or performance) fees. Following the Bank of Italy's intervention in 2012, Italian-registered funds have more stringent conditions than other countries for the calculation of incentive fees, guaranteeing greater protection for investors.
However, the high diffusion of foreign law funds on the Italian market underlines the importance of tackling the issue at a Community level in order to achieve greater uniformity and eliminate the risk that distribution choices may be influenced by the more or less remunerative structure of the commissions of promoted products.
Attachments: Focus no. 31 – 21 September 2015.pdf
