In the era of "Wanji", "the same name" went together.
For a long time, the homogeneity of fund products has been criticized by the market. The most intuitive manifestation of homogenization is the increasing number of "duplicate names" of several fund products. According to the statistics of the Securities Times reporter, among the nearly 12000 funds at present, the names of "value", "growth", "optimization", "return", "competitiveness" and other words can be seen everywhere. In addition, there are also fund names that are keen to use a keyword in series, of which the word "Xin" is the most common. It is worth mentioning that these funds with similar names have been in the public eye for 20 years. Although the industry continues to offer the "big method" for fund abbreviations, the lack of unified norms still creates a more chaotic situation, which not only makes it difficult for fund investors to distinguish between male and female funds, but also makes fund research experts call it "dizzy".
After more than 20 years of development, public funds have made remarkable achievements, and the scale of industry management has recently exceeded 30 trillion yuan. However, the cultural construction of the public fund industry still has a long way to go. For example, the level of naming products by fund companies needs to be improved, and the habit of naming products with the same name will easily make the product personality difficult to highlight, which will bring long-term "aesthetic fatigue" to investors. Previously, some relevant fund companies had made some innovative attempts to this end, but with the rapid increase in the number of products, the competition between overlapping sales and performance has become increasingly fierce, and the relevant fund companies have gradually no time to improve the recognition of product names.
A fund researcher believes that as the industry enters a new stage of high-quality development, it is necessary to standardize fund naming and abbreviations to reduce information asymmetry and improve the efficiency of information transmission.
The fund product has the same name but different names
A complete fund name is mainly composed of company name, fund name, holding period (if any), fund type, suffix and other parts, such as Wanjia · Smart Zhiyuan · one-year holding period · hybrid · securities investment fund. The part that the fund company can independently name is mainly the fund name. As of May 24, the number of publicly offered fund products has approached 12000, but the phenomenon of fund name duplication has become more and more serious, which is basically a mix of high-frequency words such as "value", "growth", "innovation", "return", "industry", "trend", "cycle", "optimization" and "competitiveness".
According to statistics, the most frequently used term for fund naming is "growth", covering 435 funds. The time span of these funds has been as long as 21 years, which can be called a microcosm of the development of the fund industry. Among them, the Southern Robust Growth Mix and China Growth Mix were established in 2001, and the Fuguo Ingenious Growth Mix and Guangfa Growth Start Mix were established in 2024. In addition, there are strategic growth mix, positive growth mix, foresight growth mix, pioneer growth mix and other products under E Fund, while there are growth leadership mix, growth pilot mix, growth selection mix, growth focus mix and other products under Huitianfu.
Following "growth" is "value". There are as many as 300 funds named "value", including Bosera value growth hybrid and Dacheng value growth hybrid founded in 2002, Guangfa value growth hybrid founded in 2021, and Guolian'an value selection hybrid founded in May 2024. In addition, some fund companies have adopted a hybrid approach of "growth value" or "value growth" to name their products, such as Penghua growth value hybrid, Cathay Pacific growth value hybrid, Ruiyuan growth value hybrid, etc., which are all established after 2018.
In addition to "growth" and "value", there are as many as 388 funds with the words "preferred" in their names, while there are 284 funds, 251 funds, 255 funds and 94 funds with the words "industry", "return", "innovation" and "dragon head", which can be seen from the high-frequency vocabulary of fund naming.
It is worth mentioning that although the naming of the above funds tends to be similar, their performance is far from the same. Taking 435 "growth" funds as an example, the difference between top and bottom performance in recent three years exceeded 100%, and the worst investment performance lost more than 65%. From the perspective of the past five years, the difference between the top and bottom performance of 435 "growth" funds has expanded to 200%, with the best performing fund floating nearly 170%, and the worst performing fund floating nearly 30%.
"One word in series" still has the same name
The phenomenon of duplicate names of funds has a long history. In recent years, with the sharp increase of the number of funds, it has become more and more obvious.
A senior fund researcher mentioned to the Securities Times reporter that as early as 2016, he had noticed this phenomenon. At that time, a large number of new funds were issued, and duplicate funds began to emerge. For example, many head public offerings named new products with words such as "Taihe", "Xinghua" and "New Start". "How dizzy! Even professional fund researchers are often confused, not to mention ordinary investors? Is Chinese characters not enough, or the industry does not understand the situation of the fund market?" He could not help sighing.
In fact, relevant fund companies have also made many efforts and attempts to avoid product name duplication. For example, between 2001 and 2008, Cathay Pacific Fund launched Cathay Pacific Golden Eagle, Golden Dragon, Golden Horse, Golden Peng, Golden Bull, Golden Deer and other products in order to improve product recognition.
The naming method of connecting several products with one keyword undoubtedly brings a new impression to the market. Or inspired by this, many fund companies have followed suit, making "one word series" gradually become a common way of naming fund products. A public offering executive told the Securities Times reporter: "Everyone wants to make money in investment, so the word 'Xin' composed of three 'Jin' characters is used most frequently."
According to statistics, there are as many as 550 funds with the word "Xin" in their names. For example, Anxin Fund has Xin'an, Xinfa, Xinri and other products, while Bosera Fund has Xinhui, Xinkang, Xinrun, Xinrong, Xintai and other products. In recent years, China Merchants Fund has named its investment strategy products with the word "Rui" in series, forming a series of "Rui" funds, including more than 10 products such as Ruiwen, Ruiyang, Ruize, Ruide, Ruihe, Ruian and Ruihong.
The above naming methods have even been applied to channel customized funds. A brand personage of a large public offering told the Securities Times: "In recent years, channel customized products are often labeled with specific labels through naming to form a certain degree of recognition. For example, a customized fund that a fund company cooperates with China Merchants Bank may add the word" recruit "to its name, Minsheng Bank The name of the fund in the Panshi series will be "Pan". "
On the whole, the long-term use of the "one word series" method will also bring about similar phenomenon of duplicate names. A medium-sized public offering brand personage mentioned to the Securities Times reporter that his company's product department is busy naming products recently. During his inventory, 39 high-frequency words were listed. In addition to "Rui" and "Xin", there are "Sheng", "Long", "Zhen", "Yi", "Zhuo", "Chong", "Rui", "Hong", "Reputation" and "Run".
A good name is not as good as a good performance
With the rapid increase in the number of funds, the method of naming funds is obviously not enough.
According to the observation of the aforesaid brand personage of a medium-sized public offering, there are two main difficulties in the naming of funds at present: first, there are not so many words that can be used under the homogenization of products, "the head company has basically used the words that can be used in earlier years"; Second, the audit has become stricter. Words with a slight "hint" may be stuck, such as "stability" and "income".
The aforementioned brand personage of a large public offering said frankly that naming is just a small part of product development, and the main purpose is to sell products, Sometimes, investment research opinions are also solicited for fund naming. If the fund manager values it, it is up to the fund manager to make the final decision. A well-known case in the industry is that a well-known fund manager named the new fund after his two children when he issued a new fund a few years ago. "This is a special way, but it is also risky, mainly because it can't guarantee that the fund manager will always manage this product." In addition, if the company's senior management thinks that the initial name is not loud and beautiful enough, they will also let the brand department participate in it, so as to have a slightly more profound name.
There are also views that the core competitiveness of fund products is investment performance, which can be appropriately named, and should not spend too much energy. The aforementioned public fund executives said bluntly: "Now there are more than 10000 funds, which cannot be remembered by the market. No matter how good the name is, if the performance cannot be achieved, it will still be forgotten."
There are generally two types of funds that are easy to remember by investors: first, landmark products, such as the Fund Kaiyuan, one of the first closed products, which means "Kaiyuan Prosperity", and is quite recognizable; The second is representative products managed by well-known fund managers, such as Noan Growth Hybrid and Investment Promotion Chinese liquor index Fund, Fuguo Tianhui Growth Hybrid, China Europe Healthcare Hybrid, etc. However, it should also be noted that investors were initially attracted by fund performance, and then learned about the fund managers behind them, and finally remembered the name of the product.
It is necessary to use the standard uniformly
In order to facilitate memory, fund companies also use the method of "fund abbreviation" for fund products. However, due to the lack of unified use norms, it has created a more serious confusion than the fund name. The fund researchers mentioned above are troubled by this when collecting fund data.
"The name of the fund in the prospectus is the full legal name, but it is inconvenient to use, so everyone will simplify it." The fund researcher said that because of the diversity of institutions that use abbreviations, a product has at least three or five abbreviations, which makes everyone dizzy, "In order to avoid confusion, I will check the fund code and the date of establishment when I make statistics later, but many people are not even clear about the basic fund classification, let alone the short name of the fund.".
Generally speaking, there are two cases of confusion in fund abbreviations: one is that the name of the fund company is too brief, such as ICBC Credit Suisse, Jingshun Great Wall, and ABC Credit Union, which are abbreviated to ICBC, Jingshun, and ABC, while Morgan Stanley, which has a longer name, is abbreviated to Damo; The second is to ignore the fund attributes, such as China Merchants Securities Liquor Index Fund, which is abbreviated to China Merchants Liquor or China Merchants Securities Liquor, and ICBC Credit Suisse's 30 day rolling holding bond base is abbreviated to ICBC's 30 day rolling holding bond base.
"Funds are serious financial products. The first principle of naming is to reflect information such as the issuer, product type and investment direction, so that all parties in the market can clearly identify them. However, the name of the joint venture fund company is shortened and lacks the name of foreign shareholders, which is obviously inaccurate. Some abbreviations even lack the product type and investment type." The above fund researchers believe that the confusion of abbreviations, like fund name duplication, will cause misunderstanding among investors. Therefore, it is necessary to standardize fund naming and abbreviations to reduce information asymmetry and improve the efficiency of information transmission. "It may not be possible to come up with perfect solutions in the short term, but these phenomena should attract the attention and discussion of the industry, and may gradually form a consensus over time," said the fund researcher.
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