If any segment of the financial services industry was going to be buried by a major market meltdown, you’d think it would be an apparent anachronism, such as the mutual fund dealer business. But in reality, the opposite is the case: the dealer business is holding up better than most. As it turns out, the sector’s humble nature is its greatest strength, not a fatal weakness.
Arguably, in a financial services industry full of increasingly complex and innovative instruments, a business that is devoted to a single, basic product should have been rendered obsolete.
Clients have so many options for their financial assets that it’s hard to see why they would stick with dealers that are limited to one main product — particularly when that product is as relentlessly criticized, as mutual funds have been over the years.
Critics charge that funds are much too expensive. Fund managers have been touched with enough scandal in recent years to give clients cause to abandon them. In addition, the banks are now dominating the business like never before.
A corporate Darwinist could surely see the fund dealer industry’s demise on the horizon. Yet, the latest version of Investment Executive’s Dealers’ Report Card reveals that fund dealers are weathering the global financial crisis remarkably well.
To be sure, their advisors’ assets under management are down and productivity has suffered, but reps report no drop in satisfaction with their firms — and their financial metrics aren’t as dire as you might expect.
An enhanced focus on financial planning in recent years is surely part of the story, as is the ongoing shift toward fee- and asset-based revenue sources.
More important, although the inability to sell more sophisticated securities was long seen as a potentially fatal handicap for the fund dealer industry, it’s actually proving to be a strength in this market climate. Fund dealers are diversified in the boring old business of insurance and, more recently, banking — not securities. So, with the rise in investors’ risk aversion, it seems that fund dealers were perfectly poised to shepherd clients into the sorts of products that let them sleep at night.
In the long run, the dealer business will surely face renewed pressure to offer racier investments. But in a global market meltdown, a safe pair of hands is a good place to be.
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