Competition and Structure of the Mutual Fund Industry in Spain: The Role of Credit Institutions

Abstract

In industries where consumers prefer to make all their purchases from a single company (for example, a supermarket), companies tend to offer a greater variety of products. By using that strategy, they succeed in growing their market share in the industry and gaining market power. This behavior is also typical of the financial industry, where consumers usually prefer to concentrate all their financial operations in a single entity. In Spain, the big growth of mutual funds since 1995 and the model of universal banking, suggest the existence of these cross-effects on demand (spillovers). In this paper, we provide empirical evidence of the presence of these effects in the Spanish mutual fund market. Moreover these effects are stronger than in the US market. The intensity of the effects appears to be greater in the retail mutual fund segment than in the wholesale segment. This result would be consistent with the relative increase in the number of funds offered by fund managers, the higher fees charged, and the stronger degree of concentration of fund families found in the retail segment.