Open-end unit investment funds see strongest growth among funds for non-qualified investors

In the third quarter, the net asset value (NAV) of open-end unit investment funds (OEUIF) mainly focused on retail customers was up by 27.7 billion rubles to reach 190.5 billion rubles. This is shown by these funds’ financial statements posted on the Bank of Russia website.

‘With interest rates across banking products trending down, the public is increasingly exploring financial instruments other than deposits. Nevertheless, individuals continue to show fairly conservative approaches and tend to pick fixed income instruments that are mainly invested into bonds, so these make up roughly 60% of all investment’, Philipp Gabuniya, Director of the Collective Investment and Trust Management Department noted.

The UIF for the non-qualified investors sector was mainly unchanged in Q3, with the growth in the NAV of OEUIFs virtually set off by the decline in the NAV of closed-end unit investment funds (CEUIFs) of 27.5 billion rubles. The NAV of interval UIFs (IUIFs) for the same type of investors posted a rise of 354.9 million rubles and totalled 6.2 billion rubles.

At the same time, major IUIFs emerged as leaders by weighted average yield.  At the quarter-end, the top three integral IUIFs for non-qualified investors demonstrated a yield of 26.4% p.a.; OEUIFs recorded 17% p.a; CEUIFs turned in yield at −38% p.a.

The total number of UIFs for non-qualified investors declined in the third quarter by 31; this includes a drop in OEUIFs by 16, CEUIFs by 14 and IEUIFs by one.