Outsourcing in the International Mutual Fund Industry: An Equilibrium View
Authors: Oleg Chuprinin (University of New South Wales), Massimo Massa (INSEAD), David Schumacher (McGill)
Journal: The Journal of Finance, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study outsourcing relationships among international asset management firms. We
find that in companies that manage both outsourced and inhouse funds, inhouse funds
outperform outsourced funds by 0.85% annually (57% of the expense ratio). We attribute
this result to preferential treatment of inhouse funds via the preferential allocation of
IPOs, trading opportunities and cross-trades, especially at times when inhouse funds face
steep outflows and require liquidity. We explain preferential treatment with agency
problems: it increases with the subcontractor’s market power and the difficulty of
monitoring the subcontractor and decreases with the subcontractor’s amount of parallel
inhouse activity.