Top 5 Active investment asset managers with more inflows

A report published recently on Active investment inflows show that investors sent EUR 83.6 billion to long-term European-domiciled funds in April, almost EUR 23 billion more than the previous month. This was primarily due to the robust demand for fixed-income funds, which attracted EUR 29.4 billion.

The report by Mornigstar says that most of the money was sent to the riskier segments of the fixed income space, such as global high yield bond, EUR corporate bond, and emerging-markets bond funds, as well as to mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities funds.

Flows towards equity funds, on the other hand, cooled down to EUR 38 billion from EUR 47.3 billion in March, the lowest level in six months, but still a fair amount of money: April marked the seventh most positive month in terms of net flows over the last decade. Cyclical sectors and value categories continued to benefit from this trend.

At the same time, commodities funds attracted EUR 963 million, pushed by investors’ fear of inflation. Precious metals funds (mainly exchange-traded commodities on gold) have returned to positive territory after two months of outflows, with EUR 380 million of net subscriptions.

Allocation funds enjoyed the second highest one-month inflows since February 2018, while alternative funds returned to the green zone, taking in EUR 2.2 billion. The category had only seven positive months flow-wise in the last three years. Finally, money market funds saw net inflows of EUR 8.1 billion.

Assets in long-term funds domiciled in Europe rose to EUR 11.163 billion from EUR 10.952 billion as of March 30, 2021. This marked a new historic record for Europe's fund industry.

Active investment asset managers: The winners

Fund providers: Largest Inflows, Active investment (Excluding Money Market Funds)

Source: Morningstar Direct

On the active investment side of the long-term fund market, Mercer Global Investments topped the list of fund houses, raking in EUR 3.4 billion in April, thanks mainly to its global fixed-income products, which collected a total of EUR 2.1 billion in net inflows.

BlackRock earned second place, with EUR 2.9 billion of net inflows. Europe equity large-cap funds were the main beneficiaries, with BlackRock Europe Equity 1 Fund raking in EUR 385 million.