Saudi investment funds’ assets soar over 26% yearly to $140bn in Q3

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Saudi investment funds’ assets soar over 26% yearly to $140bn in Q3

The value of private funds’ assets in the third quarter rose faster year-on-year than public funds in the Kingdom.

The total value of assets held by investment funds in Saudi Arabia (comprising public funds and private funds) rose 26.45% in the third quarter of 2021 to SAR 526.11bn ($140.25bn), compared to SAR 416.06bn ($110.91bn) in the corresponding period of 2020.

According to the latest quarterly statistical bulletin for Q3 by Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority, the value of public funds’ assets in the Kingdom rose to SAR 239.81 billion ($63.93bn) in the third quarter (Q3) of this year, up 22.3% compared to SAR 196.07 billion ($52.27bn) in the same period last year.

Public funds assets are classified by type of investment that includes equities, debt instruments, money markets, real estates, fund of funds, balanced, ETFs, Reits, multi-asset, endowments, feeder funds, CEFs, commodities, and others.

Out of these, the value of money market public funds’ assets was the highest in Q3 at SAR 145.02bn ($38.66bn), followed by debt instruments at SAR 31.71bn ($8.45bn) and equities at SAR 26.42bn ($7.04bn) at the second and third place, respectively.

The total number of public funds classified by type of investment in the third quarter stood at 254, with equities having the most number of funds at 126, followed by money markets (42) and fund of funds (22), respectively.

In terms of the number of subscribers in public funds, Reits led the pack with 221,923 subscribers, while equities with 141,570 and money markets had 35,589 subscribers in Q3, with the total number of public funds subscribers increasing 24.5% year-on-year (YoY) to 446,731 in Q3.

On the other hand, the value of private funds’ assets classified by type of investment in the Kingdom rose by 30.14% (faster than public funds’ year-on-year growth of 22.3%), to SAR 286.3bn ($76.32bn) from SAR 219.99bn ($58.65bn) in the same period last year.

Private funds assets are classified by type of investment that includes equities, debt instruments, money markets, real estates, multi-assets, hedging and other derivatives, feeder fund, credit base fund, and commodities.

Out of these, the value of equities private funds’ assets was the highest at SAR 170.21bn ($45.38bn) in Q3, followed by real estates at SAR 89.12bn ($23.76bn), and multi-assets at SAR 11.57bn ($3.08bn), at second and third place, respectively.

The total number of private funds classified by type of investment in Q3 stood at 473, up from 403 in the third quarter of 2020, with equities having the highest number of private funds at 206.