Investors in mutual funds are increasingly turning to accounts with multiple managers, even though that means paying higher fees, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Accounts with multiple managers grew to $678 billion last year, an increase of 28%, and are expected to rise another 14% this year, according to the Boston-based research firm Cerulli Associates. But higher fees, typically 2% to 3%, and not-so-great performance still make them a questionable buy. Maybe investors just dont trust themselves.
"Investors increasingly want to hire someone else to do the fund picking for them," said Ben Phillips, a Cerulli managing director. "Advice has become more popular with investors worldwide. Multi-manager funds have advice embedded into the product."
Funds-of-funds, which are mutual funds that buy into other mutual funds, and manager-of-managers funds, which are funds that employ different managers to oversee different aspects of portfolios, have become increasingly popular. But according to Morningstar , their performance has not exactly gone parallel to their popularity. International equity funds-of-funds returned an average of 4% over the past three years, trailing international equity single funds, which came in at 5.3%.
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