The German fund industry is expecting the best sales year in its history.

The record hunt for the German Dax share index, which again reached a new record on Wednesday with 16,284 points, also contributes to this.

By the end of September, the investment companies recorded inflows of 167.9 billion euros, as the German fund association BVI reported on Wednesday.

According to him, the industry is facing a record year.

2015 has been the best sales year so far, when the fund companies received 186.6 billion euros from the beginning of January to the end of December.

Markus Frühauf

Editor in business.

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Open mutual funds, which are aimed primarily at private investors, have already exceeded their record from the year 2000.

Their new business reached 85.9 billion euros in the first nine months.

That is a good 10 billion euros more than in 2000 as a whole. On Tuesday, the Sparkasse fund company, DekaBank, reported an almost 90 percent increase in sales in private customer business in the first nine months.

In particular, equity funds, pension funds and real estate funds were in demand.

DekaBank reported that the savings plans had also developed positively.

Equity funds in great demand

According to BVI information, 79.9 billion euros flowed into open special funds and 4.4 billion euros from closed funds. Investors withdrew 2.3 billion euros from mandates. The new business of the fund industry corresponds to more than 4 percent of the assets at the beginning of the year (3,852 billion euros). At the end of September, the fund companies managed assets of 4,183 billion euros.

Private investors mainly invest their money in equity funds.

Equity funds are the sales drivers for open-ended mutual funds.

They received 42.9 billion euros, half of the new business.

Of this, actively managed funds accounted for 25.2 billion euros and equity ETFs, i.e. passive, index-tracking funds, accounted for 17.7 billion.

Funds that invest worldwide (21.7 billion euros) dominated the investment focus.

Equity funds managed assets of 586 billion euros at the end of September.

That is 28 percent more than at the beginning of the year (459 billion euros).

Sustainable funds are becoming more and more important

According to the BVI figures, sustainable funds recorded inflows of 41.6 billion euros by the end of September.

This corresponds to a share of 25 percent of new business in the fund industry as a whole.

Sustainable retail funds dominate new business with 38.8 billion euros.

The sustainable products thus contributed 45 percent of the total inflows from retail funds, reported the fund association.

At the end of September, the industry was managing a total of 452 billion euros in sustainable funds.

Of this, EUR 339 billion went to mutual funds and EUR 113 billion to special funds.