Morningstar Individual Investor Survey 2013 (Full Results)

Out of the 525 respondents who participated in the 11-question survey, 95% of the respondents have invested in financial or investment products. 

As it pertains to the popular question “ETFs or Mutual Funds?”, the results were fairly balanced. A total of 30% of respondents indicated that they are more inclined to invest in ETFs in the future while 24% indicated a preference for mutual funds. The remainder responded that they have no preference.

Other key findings of the survey are as follows:

·         Home-bias was notable within the survey results, with 72% of mutual fund/ETF investors responding that their investments were concentrated in Hong Kong/Greater China equities, followed by 54% in other Asian equities.

·         Investors tend to invest larger amounts of money into mutual funds than ETFs - 31% of the mutual fund investors’ have over US$50,000 in mutual funds whereas 42% of the ETF investors’ have less than US$15,000 in ETFs.

·         The potential to “earn above–benchmark returns” ranked at the top of the list of investors’ favourite attributes of actively managed mutual funds, with 58% of the respondents finding this attribute attractive, followed by “plenty of choices” at 52%.

·         Amongst ETF investors, 61% have invested an amount less than or equal to 10% of their portfolio in ETFs. This figure suggests that ETF adoption remains low.

·         While 83% of the participants in our survey were aware that ETFs would allow them to invest in various countries, regions and sectors, awareness of the availability of niche exposures, such as emerging/frontier markets or high dividend yield equities, was notably lower, at around 60%.

To access the full results of the Morningstar Individual Investor Survey 2013, click here.