The Way Forward with Fund Investors

Each year, ICI’s General Membership Meeting offers the fund industry a chance to come together to reflect on the past year and to look ahead to new opportunities. For the past eight months, it’s been my honor and pleasure to chair the GMM Planning Committee, working with a dedicated and talented group of individuals to organize this meeting.

As I said in my opening remarks at GMM today, our theme for the conference this year is “The Way Forward with Fund Investors.” We chose this theme because, after weathering the financial crisis, it’s a good time to be looking forward.

We’ve come a long way in the past three years. As an industry, we rallied together to address our challenges while continuing to serve our shareholders. Meanwhile, most investors never lost their commitment to funds as their tool for saving and investing for the long term. Now, we are definitely seeing progress as financial markets have regained their footing.

To be sure, the way forward won’t be easy. We still face the challenges of an economy that’s recovering from crisis and recession, with significant issues still to be resolved. However, we also see the desire of our investors to meet their financial goals.

Looking forward, we can count on our industry’s strengths—rooted in a history of innovation, service, and fiduciary responsibility. We do well when we do good things for investors.