BankAmerica Corp. beat all other bank holding companies in sales of stock and bond mutual funds and annuities in the first quarter, bank call report data show.
The San Francisco company sold $1.6 billion of these types of investments, topping second place NationsBank, of Charlotte, N.C., which sold $1.2 billion.
But sales were still relatively low when compared with the mutual fund industry as a whole.
The 1,928 banks that reported investment product sales to regulators sold $11.4 billion worth of long-term funds and annuities in the first quarter.
This was less than one-tenth of the total of $158 billion of mutual funds and variable annuities sold overall, according 19 the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade group for fund companies.
"This is still a relatively small percentage," said Dennis Dolego, a partner in Southport, Conn., with Financial Research Corp., a Chicago firm that tracks the fund industry.
Long-term mutual funds and annuities typically are held for investment purposes.
They do not include money market funds, which are often used like interest bearing checking accounts.
The bank data were disclosed for the first time ever in first-quarter call reports filed with banking. regulators.
The information was aggregated to the bank holding company level by this newspaper.
The data in many respects are rough. For example, the numbers include sales both of banks' proprietary funds and of funds managed by other companies, without distinguishing between the two.
But the data also shed further light on the business. For example, the information shows that the contribution of these types of investment sales to banking companies' bottom lines is minimal.
Take the leader in sales, BankAmerica. The company only collected $30.8 million of sales and service charges for annuities and mutual fund in the first quarter.
Second place NationsBank only received $5.8 million of these fees.
Third place Morgan Guaranty Trust Co., of New York, got $3.7 million of fees and sold $721 million of long-term funds. Fees in the banking industry totaled $302.6 million.
Also, these data, when combined with data available from other sources, appear to confirm that the lion's share of BankAmerica's mutual fund and annuity sales were of funds managed by other companies.
According to Financial Research, the bank's proprietary mutual funds had net new sales of $22 million in the first quarter.
But this figure is not directly comparable to the total sales figures, since the total figure doesn't adjust for redemptions.
In the mutual fund and variable annuity industry as a whole, redemptions amounted to just over half of total sales, according to the Investment Company Institute.
Thus, one would have to conclude that "the large majority of their sales were not in proprietary funds," Mr. Dolego said, referring to BankAmerica.
Officials with the company have said that about 20% of their retail sales are of proprietary funds, although their goal is to boost the proportion to nearly half of all these sales.
By contrast, all of Morgan Guaranty Trust Co.'s mutual fund sales were of the company's proprietary Pierpont family, said Evelyn E. Guernsey, managing director of the company's mutual fund business in this country.
Morgan's does not sell other companies' mutual funds, she said. Fee Leaders Fees earned on mutual fundsand annuities by some topbanks in the fieldBankAmerica $30.8 millionCiticorp $24.2 millionWells Fargo $20.7 millionAll Banks $302.7 millionSource: Bank call reports
