A few weeks ago, we published a sneak peek at the results of the Morningstar Individual Investor Survey 2013, revealing the results of three of the questions related to ETFs. Here we share the full results of the survey.
During the two-month period between 19 July and 18 September 2013, we asked visitors to our Hong Kong and Singapore websites to participate in a survey. The aim of this survey was to attain a more complete understanding of the unique needs, goals, and objectives of mutual fund and ETF investors in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Out of the 525 respondents who participated in the 11-question survey, 95% of the respondents have invested in financial or investment products.
As it pertains to the popular question “ETFs or Mutual Funds?”, the results were fairly balanced. A total of 30% of respondents indicated that they are more inclined to invest in ETFs in the future while 24% indicated a preference for mutual funds. The remainder responded that they have no preference.
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Other key findings of the survey are as follows:
· Home-bias was notable within the survey results, with 72% of mutual fund/ETF investors responding that their investments were concentrated in Hong Kong/Greater China equities, followed by 54% in other Asian equities.
· Investors tend to invest larger amounts of money into mutual funds than ETFs - 31% of the mutual fund investors’ have over US$50,000 in mutual funds whereas 42% of the ETF investors’ have less than US$15,000 in ETFs.
· The potential to “earn above–benchmark returns” ranked at the top of the list of investors’ favourite attributes of actively managed mutual funds, with 58% of the respondents finding this attribute attractive, followed by “plenty of choices” at 52%.
· Amongst ETF investors, 61% have invested an amount less than or equal to 10% of their portfolio in ETFs. This figure suggests that ETF adoption remains low.
· While 83% of the participants in our survey were aware that ETFs would allow them to invest in various countries, regions and sectors, awareness of the availability of niche exposures, such as emerging/frontier markets or high dividend yield equities, was notably lower, at around 60%.
To access the full results of the Morningstar Individual Investor Survey 2013, click here.
