The Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) published its full year 2022 data and analysis of mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) sales in 2022, examining total sales, new fund launches and the impact market movements and Bank of Canada interest rate announcements had on different fund category sales.
At the end of 2022, Canadian mutual fund assets totalled $1.8-trillion, while ETF assets finished the year at $313.7-billion. Mutual funds were redeemed by investors who cashed in $44.1-billion, while ETF sales were $36.1-billion. “Due to net redemptions and negative market effect, mutual fund assets decreased by 13.1 per cent. For ETFs, despite positive net sales, negative market effect resulted in a three per cent decrease in assets,” IFIC’s researchers write in the 2022 Investment Funds Report. “Over the last ten years, mutual fund assets more than doubled, adding $959-billion and ETF asset grew by more than 5.5 times, adding $257-billion.”
According to the report, there were 113 companies offering mutual funds at the end of 2022. The number of available mutual funds increased by 107 on a net basis, bringing the total number of funds available to investors to 3,409. At the end of last year, 42 investment firms also offered ETFs. “The majority of these companies offer both ETFs and mutual funds,” they write. On a net basis, 90 ETFs were added during the year, bringing the total number of ETF funds on offer to 1,056. 2022 was notable for being the year that the first target date ETFs were launched in Canada, they add.
IFIC notes that approximately one-third of new mutual fund launches throughout the year were products with responsible investing objectives. Just under half of all new ETF launches involved funds with responsible investment mandates.
At the end of 2022, responsible investment mutual fund assets totalled $34.5-billion, while ETF assets in the same category totalled $10.2-billion. All told in 2022, responsible investment net sales were $3.9-billion for mutual funds and $2.9-billion for ETFs.
High interest savings mutual fund assets, meanwhile, were $6.8-billion at the end of 2022 while high interest ETF assets totalled $15.5-billion. “Net sales into these funds accounted for 64.4 per cent of all money market mutual fund sales and 94.6 per cent of all money market ETF sales.” The report also looks at sales by asset category and compares net sales against market movements and interest rate announcements by the Bank of Canada.
“IFIC’s extensive data collection and reporting capabilities enable us to further understand the interaction of the economic environment and the investment funds industry,” says IFIC’s president and CEO, Andy Mitchell. “These insights help our member firms and other industry stakeholders track changes, identify market trends and better understand the investor experience.”
