Mutual funds recorded $116 million in monthly net redemptions in June, according to final statistics released Thursday by the Investment Funds Institute of Canada.

IFIC reported modest overall net redemptions for funds in the month, which represents an improvement from May’s net redemptions of $1.08 billion, and redemptions of $834.7 million in June 2009. Moreover, long-term funds managed $1.12 billion in net sales for the month. The redemptions came on the money market side, $1.24 billion worth.

The positive long-term fund sales were a turnaround from May when long-term funds recorded redemptions, but they were below the net sales of $1.97 billion that were generated in the same month last year.

Balanced funds topped the sales charts in June, with net sales of $1.3 billion, pushing the category’s total over the last 12 months to $23.2 billion. Fixed income funds had net sales of $452.2 million in June, which is up from $237.8 million in May, but down from $1.06 billion recorded in June 2009.

Equity funds remained in net redemptions in June, albeit at a lower level than the previous month. In June, the equity category saw $647.2 million in net redemptions, which is down from $1.65 billion in May. The decrease in equity fund net redemptions was due mostly to the global & international equity and domestic equity fund categories which had lower net redemptions in June than they did in May, IFIC said.

“We really see the big pick-up in long-term fund sales over the last six months as compared to the same period last year being driven by balanced fund and fund-of-fund investment,”said Pat Dunwoody, vice president of member services and communications with IFIC.

Dynamic Funds led the overall sales in June, with almost $253 million, followed by IGM Financial Inc. at $238 million, and Fidelity Investments Canada ULC at $167 million.

RBC led the long-term sales, with $392 million worth, but this was trumped by $565 million in redemptions from its money market funds. IGM ranked second, and Dynamic third on the long-term side.

IFIC also reported that mutual fund assets totaled $591.8 billion at the end of June, down by 1.4%, from May. “Annual long-term fund asset growth has been strong at $71.3 billion or 15% but has been fairly flat and more volatile when we focus in on the last six months, which gives us some indication why investors have been concentrating on the diversification of balanced and portfolio style investments,” Dunwoody added.

IE