As we wrote last Wednesday, the Investment Company Institute recently published its "2022 Investment Company Fact Book," an annual compilation of statistics and commentary on the mutual fund industry. We reviewed much of the money fund content in our May 25 News, "ICI Publishes 2022 Fact Book, Reviews US, Worldwide Money Funds in '21." But below we focus on the numerous "Data Tables" involving "Money Market Mutual Funds," which start on page 200. ICI lists annual statistics on shareholder accounts, the number of funds, net assets, net new cash flows, paid and reinvested dividends, composition of prime and government funds, and net assets of institutional investors by type of institution.
ICI's annual statistics show that there's been a steady decline in the number of money market mutual funds over the last 16 years. (See Table 35 on page 200.) In 2021, according to the Fact Book, there were a total of 305 money funds, down from 340 in 2020, 364 in 2019, 802 in 2007, and down from 1,014 in 2001. The number of share classes stood at 1,061 in 2021, down from 1,108 in 2020, 1,126 in 2018 and 1,998 in 2008.
Table 36 on page 201, "Money Market Funds: Total Net Assets by Type of Fund," shows that total net assets in taxable U.S. money market funds increased $422.4 billion to $4.756 trillion in 2021. At year-end 2021, $3.276 trillion (68.9%) was in institutional money market funds, while $1.480 trillion (31.1%) was in retail money market funds. Breaking the numbers down by fund type, $441.0 billion (9.3%) was in prime funds, $4.228 trillion (88.9%) was in government money market funds, and $86.8 billion (1.8%) was in tax-exempt accounts.
Also, Table 37 on page 202, "Money Market Funds: Net New Cash Flow by Type of Fund," shows that there was $422.1 billion in net new cash flow into money market funds last year. A closer look at the data shows $465.7 billion in net new cash flow into institutional funds and a $43.5 billion cash outflow from retail funds. There were also $541.0 billion in net inflows into Government funds, versus $100.1 billion in net outflows from Prime funds.
Table 39 (page 204), "Money Market Funds: Paid and Reinvested Dividends by Type of Fund," shows dividends paid by money funds were $4.1 billion, $2.1 billion of which was reinvested (50.9%). Dividends have been as high as $127.9 billion in 2007 (when rates were over 5%), and as low as $5.2 billion in 2011 (when rates were 0.05%). Reinvestment rates were 64.4% in 2007 and 62.3% in 2011, so they've remained relatively stable over the past decade.
ICI's Tables 40 and 41 on pages 205 and 206, "Taxable Government Money Market Funds: Asset Composition as a Percentage of Total Net Assets" and "Taxable Prime Money Market Funds: Asset Composition," show that of the $4.228 trillion in taxable government money market funds, 9.0% were in U.S. government agency issues, 51.2% were in Repurchase agreements, 25.5% were in U.S. Treasury bills, 14.5% were in Other Treasury securities, and -0.3% was in "Other" assets. The average maturity was 35 days, down 14 days from the end of 2020.
The second table shows that of the $441.0 billion in Prime funds at year-end 2021, 26.4% was in Certificates of deposit, 31.0% was in Commercial paper, 36.6% was in Repurchase agreements, 0.1% was in US government agency issues, 0.4% was in Other Treasury securities, 0.5% was in Corporate notes, 0.1% percent was in Bank notes, 0.4% was in US Treasury bills, 0.1% was in Eurodollar CDs, and 4.0% was in Other assets (which includes Banker's acceptances, municipal securities and cash reserves).
Table 60 on page 225, "Total Net Assets of Mutual Funds Held in Individual and Institutional Accounts," shows that there was $1.949 trillion of assets in money funds with Institutional investors, and $2.806 in MMF assets in Individual accounts in 2021.
Finally, Table 62, "Total Net Assets of Institutional Investors in Taxable Money Market Funds by Type of Institution and Type of Fund," shows of the total of $1.942 trillion in Total Institutional assets ($1.790 trillion in Institutional funds and another $152.1 billion in Retail funds), $812.5 billion were held by business corporations (41.8%), $901.6 billion were held by financial institutions (46.4%), $147.1 billion were held by nonprofit organizations (7.6%), and $80.5 billion were held by Other (4.1%).
