판매보수의 펀드투자자금과 투자성과에 대한 영향

초록

As the fund industry emerges as an important saving channel for retail investors, the ‘cost’ of fund investment has attracted public attention. In particular, sales fees, which are the largest portion of the total cost of fund investment in Korea, have been a focal point of policy debate. A Critical view argues that sales fees are more of a cost factor to final investors and produce a negative effect on fund performance. This seems to be a prevailing view in Korea, as indicated by a recent regulation that imposed a ceiling on sales fees. In contrast, there are arguments advocating sales fees, which were developed in the US during the 1980s as a response to the 12b-1 fee. The original justification for the plans, as put forth by the US mutual fund industry in the 1970s, was that such fees help attract new investors into funds through advertising and by providing incentives for brokers to market the fund. Arguably, asset growth from any means benefits shareholders through economies of scale in management expenses and lower flow volatility,which decreases liquidity costs for the fund. While public attention and policy debate on sales fees abound, academic studies of the issue remain rare even in the US partly due to lack of the data. Recently, researchers examined the relationship between the 12b-1fee and fund flows, and reported that the 12b-1 fee increased fund flows (Barber, Odean, and Zheng 2005; Bergstresser, Chalmers and Tufano 2009). In this paper, we empirically examine the associations among sales fees, fund flows, and fund performances using Korean monthly fund data from 2002 to 2010. We obtained the following findings : (1) the positive effect of sales fees on fund flows exists only when the fund underperforms the market; (2) sales fees have significant positive relations with the performance of funds evaluated on a gross return basis (before netting ex-penses), but not with the performance of funds evaluated on a net return basis (after netting expenses); (3) in a sample of above-median-sized funds that were at least 1 year old after, sales fees had a significantly negative effect on fund performance on a net return basis. These empirical findings suggest that sales fees do not work for the benefits of investors. It is notable that some of the regression results are different from previous US studies. In risk factors measured by standard deviations of past returns, fund sizes are found positively related to fund flows, marking a contrast with US findings. Importantly, the finding that sales fees have no significant relationship with fund flows is also inconsistent with the US studies. These differences between the two counties could be simply a reflection of different stages of industry development. But a more interesting possibility is that cognitive biases of fund investors may differ between the two countries due to institutional differences. For example, sales fees may be a ‘hidden cost’ to US investors as they are only a small portion of the sales cost; this may not be so for Korean investors since sales fees are the major form of sales cost and have received wide media attention. Explaining the different empirical findings between Korea and the US,while considering the possibility of behavioral biases, could be an interesting future research agenda.

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