Swedbank announces mutual fund marketplace, giving customers greater freedom of choice
Swedbank, Sweden’s largest distributor of financial products, is now opening its entire distribution network to mutual fund trading. The aim is to create newfound enthusiasm for fund investments. Swedbank will be the first major Swedish bank to launch a mutual fund marketplace for the most popular funds in the market.
Swedbank will provide extensive information, news and analyses from its own experts and other fund management companies. The material will be available free of charge through the bank’s website, www.swedbank.se.
”When it comes to investing in mutual funds, Swedes want a more active role in making choices,” says Diviesh Vithlani, Head of Savings and Investments at Swedbank. “Investors are looking at their fund holdings from a shorter perspective. This has created the substantial increase in fund trading we are now seeing. Net savings, on the other hand, have not increased. They are still about SEK 80-100 billion per year.”
Swedbank wants to make it easier for customers to trade funds by breaking with the industry’s outdated practices regarding the distribution of funds. Customers will have greater opportunities to choose from among the market’s best funds.
“We want to make buying and selling mutual funds as easy as trading stocks,” says Diviesh Vithlani. “The mutual fund industry therefore has to reach a consensus on rules that create more cost-effective trading for investors with minimal barriers to entry.”
“Customers are still paying too many fees in order to trade mutual funds. This is symbolic of an antiquated market logic we want to shake up. We hope to change the business logic from both an industry and customer perspective,” he adds.
When Swedbank’s mutual fund marketplace is launched in June, customers will initially be able to trade 150 funds through the bank’s distribution network, which includes the Internet, telephone and the branches of Swedbank and Sweden’s savings banks. In the fall additional funds will be added from a number of fund management companies.