Fund assets continued to rise despite the corona crisis. Most of the gains come from net inflows.
Despite the corona crisis, the domestic fund industry managed more money than ever in the previous year. The fund assets rose by 7.5 billion euros or 3.8 percent to 202.5 billion euros, announced the Financial Market Authority (FMA) on Tuesday. That is a new all-time high. The slump from the first quarter of 2020 was fully offset.
A large part of the increase came from net inflows (6.1 billion euros), the remaining 1.4 billion euros were due to exchange rate gains. Of the over 200 billion euros in fund assets, 112.6 billion euros were managed by domestic alternative investment funds (AIF) and 89.9 billion euros by domestic institutions for collective investment in securities (UCITS).
Predominantly mixed funds
Most of the money was in mixed funds, which grew by 7.6 percent to 89.9 billion euros. There was also growth in equity funds (plus 2.3 percent to 33.7 billion euros), real estate funds (plus 5.3 percent to 9.9 billion euros) and sustainability funds in accordance with the Austrian environmental label UZ49 (plus 61 percent to 16, 9 billion euros).
Pension funds also make up a large part of the assets under management with EUR 62.3 billion, but grew by only 0.3 percent more in volume in the previous year and recorded net cash outflows of EUR 456 million. In contrast, net inflows were mainly seen in mixed funds (plus 5.1 billion euros), equity funds (plus 1.2 billion euros) and real estate funds (plus 340 million euros).
A good 2,000 funds approved
According to the FMA, 14 investment companies (KAG) and 54 alternative investment fund managers (AIFM) were licensed in Austria at the end of 2020. This increased the number of AIFMs by three, while the number of KAGs remained unchanged.
A total of 2,018 domestic funds were approved for sale, of which 1,032 funds were allowed to be sold to the general public and 986 funds to institutional investors. The number of foreign funds approved in Austria was 9,352.
