IIFA Announces New Report of Historical Data on Worldwide Open-End Funds

Assets and Flows Updated Quarterly in US, European, and Local Currencies

Washington, DC, May 16, 2018—The International Investment Funds Association (IIFA) today is launching publicly available statistical reports—collected in “Worldwide Historical Assets and Flows for Regulated Open-End Funds”—that will be updated quarterly. This report features a new data series that begins with first quarter 2008 and goes through fourth quarter 2017. In addition to the data compiled in the new release, the IIFA will continue to publish its quarterly update on worldwide regulated open-end fund assets and flows.

This is the first time any fund data provider has published for public use such a lengthy historical time series of data on regulated open-end funds. Today’s new historical report contains data through fourth quarter 2017 on total net assets, total net sales, and number of funds from 48 jurisdictions, broken out by jurisdiction and published in US dollars, euros, and local currencies. IIFA believes this easily accessible historical information will be valuable for the work of industry researchers, analysts, and regulators.

IIFA Completing Time Series for Its Expanded Collection

For more than two decades, IIFA has been compiling worldwide open-end fund statistics released by the Investment Company Institute. In 2015, the IIFA expanded the scope and quality of the data that constitute the statistics in its existing release—“Worldwide Regulated Open-End Fund Assets and Flows”— to cover all “substantively regulated” open-end investment funds. To qualify as a substantively regulated fund, a fund must be constrained by some diversification limits, concentration limits, or leverage limits, with a view to offering a high level of investor protection. As a result of the expansion, IIFA added data on exchange-traded funds (ETFs), institutional funds, guaranteed/protected funds, and open-end real estate funds.

In 2015, revised historical data for the expanded regulated open-end fund collection was available beginning only with the first quarter of 2014. The new historical report presents a time series starting in 2008, reflecting the culmination of IIFA’s work since 2015 toward eliminating the breaks in the time series, and largely completing a longer, historical time series. for the expanded collection. The data now available provide a more consistent data series from 2008 through 2015. The new report notes any remaining breaks.