There are many more asset management businesses to be found with seemingly (too?) low valuations. But the overall story might be that all but the very largest players get squeezed by ever lower margins but required investments (they like to call it investments I guess) into technology and data (it might merely mean higher annual fee for index data and software licenses) ...
Oh how much exactly do these data and software providers charge? Wouldn't an increasing aum help counteract these fixed costs? Scale eff.
The main thing for mutual funds were the upfront commissions charged by financial advisors. This is now paid by the client in Canada. So the only thing left are trailing commissions, which sits at .25% to 1%. A financial advisor is incentivized to not pitch a low cost etf or index fund.
Meaning any novice going to seek help from a financial advisor gets sold one of these funds. I personally believe the fee pressure argument is already well reflected to the point of over pessimism. The financial advisor relies on mutual funds sticking around. The mutual funds rely on financial advisors staying around. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone adds their mark up. Financial advisors are like real estate agents, are their commissions worth it, never, but they sell what u need them to sell cuz u don't have the clientele.
We know that the best bang for buck option are low cost etfs and index funds. But not everyone is as well informed as us. We have to step out of ourselves here and look at this from the amateurs perspective. Most ppl can't be bothered to learn about finance outside of their jobs so rely on financial advisors. Yes fee pressure, but I wouldn't bet that this industry is going away anytime soon.
There are many more asset management businesses to be found with seemingly (too?) low valuations. But the overall story might be that all but the very largest players get squeezed by ever lower margins but required investments (they like to call it investments I guess) into technology and data (it might merely mean higher annual fee for index data and software licenses) ...
Anyway. Very interesting!
Oh how much exactly do these data and software providers charge? Wouldn't an increasing aum help counteract these fixed costs? Scale eff.
The main thing for mutual funds were the upfront commissions charged by financial advisors. This is now paid by the client in Canada. So the only thing left are trailing commissions, which sits at .25% to 1%. A financial advisor is incentivized to not pitch a low cost etf or index fund.
Meaning any novice going to seek help from a financial advisor gets sold one of these funds. I personally believe the fee pressure argument is already well reflected to the point of over pessimism. The financial advisor relies on mutual funds sticking around. The mutual funds rely on financial advisors staying around. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone adds their mark up. Financial advisors are like real estate agents, are their commissions worth it, never, but they sell what u need them to sell cuz u don't have the clientele.
We know that the best bang for buck option are low cost etfs and index funds. But not everyone is as well informed as us. We have to step out of ourselves here and look at this from the amateurs perspective. Most ppl can't be bothered to learn about finance outside of their jobs so rely on financial advisors. Yes fee pressure, but I wouldn't bet that this industry is going away anytime soon.