Of the survey respondents, 81 percent held mutual funds within an employer-sponsored retirement plan, while 64 percent held mutual funds outside of their plans. Half of the respondents accessed mutual funds through investment professionals like brokers, independent financial planners and banks, while 36 percent accessed mutual funds via the direct market.
Unsurprisingly, equity funds are the most commonly owned mutual funds, with 86 percent of the mutual-fund-owning households owning at least one equity mutual fund. More than half of the respondents, 54 percent, held money market funds, while 44 percent owned bond funds and 37 percent owned balanced funds. Other fund types accounted for just 2 percent of the survey respondents.
Broken down by assets, domestic equity is the largest category of funds, accounting for 43 percent of the respondents’ assets, followed by bonds at 23 percent, world equity at 16 percent, money markets at 10 percent and balanced funds at 9 percent.
For the report, the ICI conducted a survey of 5,000 U.S. households from May to July 2017, with 2,223 of the households contacted reporting ownership of mutual funds.