Americans, it seems, are not alone in being woefully uninformed about investment topics. A knowledge gap exists too among retail investors in Asia.
According to a new report of Cerulli Associates, a "large swathe of investors" in the Asia-Pacific region don't know anything about mutual funds. Upshot: low product adoption.
These findings appear in the fourth quarter issue of, "The Cerulli Edge: Asia-Pacific Edition." The survey draws on responses from almost 4,000 retail investors in four countries — China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore — and is being published in conjunction with Cerulli's inaugural Asian Investor Segmentation report.
The lack of knowledge about mutual funds is evident in the products' low penetration in the four countries. As an investment option, mutual funds constitute only about 10 percent of the Asian investors' financial holdings.
