TheEdge
TOKYO: Manulife Financial Corp, North America's No 2 life insurer, said it would enter the Japanese mutual fund business next month to tap the country's US$14 trillion (RM48.02 trillion) in household assets.
Manulife executives told an investor conference in Tokyo that it had obtained a licence for investment trusts, which are similar to mutual funds, and planned to launch global asset allocation products in October.
There is room for growth in Japan's mutual fund industry given that more than half of the country's household financial assets are in deposits earning close to no interest, compared with just 14% in the United States, Manulife said.
Mutual funds also make up a much larger portion of invested assets in the US than in Japan.
"That discrepancy doesn't really make sense and that difference is worth in a Japanese context hundreds of billions of dollars. So we would like to have a piece of that," Craig Bromley, executive vice president and general manager Japan, told the conference. -- Reuters
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