The former investors in the FNI and FNA are returning to investing in mutual funds, even though they have incurred significant losses from such investments in the past.
The gains generated, at the moment, by mutual funds are far from the impressive, but fake growth the investors were seeing from the two funds of SOV Invest. At the same time, the number of investors is much smaller this time around.
Whereas the FNI (National Investment Fund) that collapsed in 2000 had attracted almost 300,000 investors by the end of 1999, the number of investors in the 32 open-ended funds on the market amounted to 78,380 in 2006, about 10% more than at the end of the previous year.
"Although there are no official statistics, I can tell you, as a personal evaluation that the there are hundreds of former FNI investors subscribed to the funds managed by Certinvest. I spoke with dozens of investors in the Certinvest funds that confessed to me that they had been investors in the FNI but continued to choose such an instrument after making sure the rules are observed, inasmuch as there is a reliable depositary," says Eugen Voicu, Certinvest chairman.
One of the causes that led to the FNI crash was the lack of a depositary, to certify the value of the net assets. At present, every single fund on the market is checked by a depositary.
The collapse of the National Investment Fund seven years ago was the start of a new age in the history of mutual funds. The investors' confidence in the investment funds, most of the time more profitable than the bank deposits, has yet to match the level reached at the end of the nineties.
Whereas the number of FNI investors had fallen below 45,000 in 2001, their number has been growing constantly over the last five years.
The total net assets were valued at around 674 million RON (198 million euros) at the end of Jan
