Private pension fund flow, performance and cost relationship under frequent regulatory change

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate private pension fund investor sentiment against fund performance and cost in an environment of frequent regulatory changes. The analyses are conducted in a low return, high-cost private pension fund market environment, which makes it easier to observe the relationship between investor sentiment to return and cost. Design/methodology/approach - This paper conducts fixed effect, random effect and random effect within between effect panel data analyses of all Turkish private pension funds from 2011 to 2019. This paper conducts the analyses using aggregate data and subsets based on fund characteristics and pre-post regulation periods. Findings - When regulations provide compensation and improve market efficiency in a pension fund market, investor focus shifted from performance to cost. Investors allocated assets with respect to return realization when adequately compensated for risk or had favorable cost contract clauses. Consequently, investors in pension funds with lower expected returns and no special fee reduction clauses tended to adopt the strategy of cost minimization. Research limitations/implications - The overlap of regulatory change periods could complicate the ability to distinguish the impact of any one specific change. The findings therefore cannot be generalized to differently structured markets. Practical implications - Regulatory changes could lead to a switch of investor objectives. When regulatory changes compensate investors and increase market efficiency, investors objective could switch from performance to cost. Originality/value - This study investigates investor sentiment in a relatively young private pension fund market, in which the relevant regulatory body ambitiously implements frequent changes in regulation. The selected market is unique in the sense that it has negative real returns and high costs, which make investor focus to return and cost more readily apparent.