The managed funds industry, consisting of open unlisted unit trusts and ETPs and represented in the Rainmaker Information database, had estimated positive net flows of $11.6 billion in the 12 months to December 2024. This represents a total gain of 2% of FUM due to net flows (not including returns from market returns).
Total FUM in the sample increased $106 billion or 14% from $752 billion to $859 billion.
There was a sharp contrast between unit trusts and ETPs, with unit trusts suffering negative net flows of $13 billion over the 12 months and ETP’s benefiting from positive net flows of $24.6 billion.
Unit trusts gained 9% or $55 billion over 12 months. Without the positive market returns the loss to unit trusts would have been –2% from net funds flow. ETPs, on the other hand, had a total gain of 36% year on year ($52 billion).
In terms of net flows for individual products, ETPs had 157 products with 12 month positive net flows versus 83 with negative net flows (ratio of two to one). This contrasts with unit trusts which had a ratio of positive to negative flows of 0.6 (326 with positive net flows versus 514 with negative net flows).
Asset classes
Five asset class sectors had positive net flows over the 12 months: Short duration bonds (credit, high yield and absolute return), diversified bonds, Australian equities large cap, international equities small caps, emerging markets equities.
The fastest growing sector is international equities small caps, which grew 34% over 12 months from $2.4 billion of net funds flow. This contrasted with international equities large cap, which had negative net flows of $1.9 billion.
The largest negative net flows occurred in Diversified products (negative $2.6 billion) and property (negative$2.7 billion). Diversified consists of Growth, Balanced and Capital Stable. Growth had positive net flows of $500 million, Balanced and Capital Stable each had negative net flows of approximately $1.5 billion each.
12-month sector net flows to 31 December 2024
Investment managers
Of the managers in the Rainmaker Information managed funds database, 46% had positive net flows and 54% had negative net flows.
For those managers with net inflows, the median was $151 million and the mean was $650 million. For those in net outflow, the median was negative $135 million and the mean outflow was $403 million.
Top 10 managers by net flows to 31 December 2024
Products
Four of the top five products based on net flows were ETPs. The product with the highest net flows was the iShares Global Bond Index Fund with $2.9 billion.
Of the products in the sample, 45% had positive net flows and 55% had negative net flows over 12 months. The average net flow for products with positive net flows was $138 million while the average net outflow for products with negative flows was $97 million.
Of the 241 ETPs in the sample (dual access funds have been excluded) 65% had positive net flows in the past 12 months, while 34% had negative net flows. Of the positive net flow ETPs, the average net flow was $176 million, while the average negative net flow was $38 million.
The ETP with the highest net flows was the iShares S&P 500 ETF with $2 billion (FUM growth of 18% due to net flows)
In the top 10 products by flow for both unit trusts and ETPs, five were low cost indexed products, one was a moderate cost smart beta product and four were private credit products.
Top 10 products by net flows to 31 December 2024
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