ICI Viewpoints Content

The pandemic-related market turmoil of March 2020 and the responses to it among financial markets and regulators will undoubtedly weigh heavily on regulators as they make adjustments over the coming years. At ICI’s 2021 General Membership Meeting, ICI President and CEO Eric J. Pan sat...

On May 29, we celebrate National 529 Day (5/29, get it?)—a day to highlight the importance of 529 savings plans in helping Americans plan and pay for education expenses. If you have plans for education or have plans for your family’s education, and if you aren’t already saving in a...

Managing your finances is serious business, so people may not often associate “fund” with “fun.” But that’s all right, because investors associate funds with something more important—achieving their financial goals. Mutual funds offer diversified, cost-effective investment management...

A version of this letter by ICI Chief Economist Sean Collins was released in the Institute’s 61st edition of the Investment Company Fact Book. 2020. What a year. I’m writing this letter sitting in my basement, which has served as my office this past year. It’s March 15, 2021, almost...

Recently, ICI, SIFMA, and the DTCC announced that our organizations are collaborating on efforts to accelerate the US securities settlement cycle from two business days after a trade is executed (T+2) to one business day after a trade is executed (T+1). We’ve been discussing this...

Even as the market turmoil triggered by strict government mandates and social distancing due to the COVID-19 health crisis raged in March 2020, ICI started studying how registered funds weathered the crisis. As the dust settled, we quickly identified a key factor that exacerbated...

New analysis by ICI shows that prime money market funds did not pull back significantly from the commercial paper market during the height of the market turmoil and “dash for cash” triggered by the COVID-19 health crisis in March 2020.

The evidence about what happened to financial markets in March 2020 is still far too mixed and preliminary to conclude that new regulation is appropriate for bond mutual funds.

In the past decade, a number of regulators and academics have discussed concerns about the growth in the assets of bond mutual funds, as well as their increasing share of the bond market, especially the corporate bond market. 1 The concern is that bond fund investors, now playing a...

Data on UCITS ongoing charges have become more widely available to investors in recent years. Enhancements to costs and charges disclosures that UCITS and distributors make available to investors have provided them with a wealth of beneficial information, which we believe can be...