Korea Capital Market Institute

This article investigates the pattern of fund flows and post-sale fund performance of domestic equity retail funds from 2009 to 2017. Results show that investors tend to invest more in the affiliated funds as well as the funds with higher past inflows or strong performance. For the actively managed funds, the higher sales fee a fund imposes, the larger new investments in the fund. However, its post-sale performance has significantly deteriorated, which is also pronounced in the affiliated funds with large inflows or the funds with high sales fees. These findings imply that a sharp decline in domestic equity funds’ sales since 2009 is related to not only the poor performance but also conflicts of interest inherent in the process of fund sales between investors and distributors. Hence, restoring investor confidence calls for the regulator’s efforts to improve institutional arrangements to align the interests of fund managers and distributors with those of investors in addition to the fund management industry’s efforts to enhance the investment capacity.