Mutual fund assets under management have increased by 20% over the last twelve months.

The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) has released its statistics for the month of July. The organization says that net mutual fund sales for July 2014 were $4.56 billion and year-to-date net sales were $41.9 billion. This puts total mutual fund assets under management for July 2014 at $1,108 billion, an increase of 0.8% or $8.7 billion over the $1,100 billion posted in the previous month. Since July of last year, total mutual fund assets under management have gone up by $183.8 billion or 20%.

Broken down by category, balanced funds attracted the most money during July with net sales of $4.27 billion compared to net sales of $4.48 billion in June. Since the beginning of the year, net sales for balanced funds total $34.7 billion, up from the $28.3 billion recorded during the same period last year.

Equity funds saw net redemptions during the month of July, with investors withdrawing a total of $713.5 million compared to net redemptions of $415.6 million last month. Year-to-date, equity funds' are still up, with net sales of $4.38 billion compared to net sales of $1.49 billion posted in the first seven months of 2013.

As for bond funds, their net sales for the month came to $1.13 billion, down slightly from the $1.17 billion recorded in June. Year-to-date, net sales for bond funds totalled $2.38 billion, an increase compared to net sales of $1.72 billion for the same period last year.

Lastly, investors continue to move out of money market funds. This category saw net redemptions of $211 million in July. Over the last 12 months, money market fund net redemptions totalled $2.82 billion.