Asset managers in Europe and the US await with trepidation the day when the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon start distributing or even producing funds. But in China, the future is already here.
A year after Alipay, a PayPal-like affiliate of ecommerce giant Alibaba, began selling a money-market fund through the Yu’e Bao (Leftover Treasure) platform, the product has more than 541bn yuan ($87bn) in assets under management, making it one of the world’s top four money market funds.
The explosive arrival of Yu’e Bao – originally designed for customers to park money between online transactions – has prompted a series of copycat products from some of the country’s biggest internet companies, such as Baidu, which is similar to Google, and Tencent, a social network and instant chat provider.