Defined Contribution Pension Plans and Mutual Fund Flows

Vol. 16, No.3, 2018
Clemens Sialm, Laura Starks and Hanjiang Zhang

Defined contribution (DC) pension plans constitute an important component of mutual fund assets. Flows into DC plans depend on the decisions of plan sponsors and plan participants: The sponsors select the investment menus made available to employees and the participants decide how to allocate their retirement savings across the investment options.We examine the flows to mutual funds within DC pension plans and contrast these flows with flows from other mutual fund clienteles. We find that flows into funds from DC
plans exhibit more performance sensitivity than do flows from non-DC investors.