Multiple leading institutions have voiced their support: Public mutual fund sales fee reforms will drive industry transformation and reshape a healthy development ecosystem for public fund sales.

Recently, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) revised and published the "Management Regulations on Sales Fees for Publicly Offered Securities Investment Funds (Draft for Comment)" (hereinafter referred to as "the Regulations"), marking the successful completion of the "three-phase" fee reform for the public mutual fund industry.

This public mutual fund sales fee reform has attracted market-wide attention. The reform mainly includes reducing fees in the public fund sales process, requiring all fund redemption fees to be included in fund assets, and setting differentiated upper limits for trailing commission payment ratios.

Industry insiders stated that this public fund fee reform centers on investor interests, reducing subscription and purchase fee rates to benefit investors. Multiple leading institutions have actively responded and will actively promote industry transformation, enhance service capabilities of sales institutions, and reshape a healthy development ecosystem for public fund sales.

**Achieving Transformation from Scale-Focused to Investor Return-Focused**

This reform reduces subscription and purchase fee rates, providing tangible benefits to investors. The Regulations clearly lower the upper limits for subscription and purchase fee rates for equity funds, hybrid funds, and bond funds to 0.8%, 0.5%, and 0.3% respectively. Meanwhile, sales institutions are encouraged to further increase subscription and purchase fee discounts while covering costs.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) stated that public fund sales fee reform is a key measure to practice the people-oriented nature of financial work, with the core purpose of enhancing investor satisfaction and sense of gain, promoting the industry's deep transformation from "seller sales" to "buyer service." ICBC will take this as an opportunity to comprehensively upgrade customer service concepts and capabilities through comprehensive interpretation of fee reform policy content, strengthening investor education and accompaniment, optimizing service experience, and enhancing training dissemination.

China Merchants Bank also expressed that public fund sales fee reform is another important measure to implement the "Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Public Funds" and effectively protect investor interests. China Merchants Bank will earnestly implement policy requirements, persist in centering on investor interests, guide long-term patient capital into the market, and guide customers toward long-term holding, further improving service quality and optimizing customer experience. Together with all industry parties, the bank will contribute to promoting high-quality development of the public fund industry.

A relevant official from Tencent Fund Connect stated that the Regulations adhere to "investor-oriented" principles, genuinely benefiting the people, and represent one of the implementation measures of the "Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Public Funds." This can urge sales institutions to firmly establish business concepts centered on investors' best interests, achieving transformation from scale-focused to investor return-focused approaches.

"Rather than saying we expect fee reductions, we more eagerly anticipate wealth management services that match the fee levels," said Professor Wu Fei from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Product fee reductions will leave more room for high-quality services to grow, including thoughtful investor education, diversified product design, and more refined risk management.

According to reports, to enhance investor satisfaction, leading fund distribution institutions have already taken active measures to continuously reduce investor costs.

As early as 2019, Tencent Fund Connect achieved 10% discount on subscription and purchase fees for all platform fund products. The company also provides "full-process advisory services" for investors. Since its establishment, Tencent Fund Connect has cumulatively generated over 100 billion yuan in returns for users.

Ant Fund has maintained subscription fee discounts for many years. Official data shows that from 2016 to 2024, Ant Fund cumulatively saved investors an estimated over 50 billion yuan in transaction fees. Meanwhile, the platform continues to strengthen "buyer service" construction, comprehensively enhancing investor wealth management experience and satisfaction through professional digital services.

**Fully Encouraging Development of Equity Funds and Building New Ecosystem for Public Fund Sales Development**

The Regulations emphasize the orientation toward developing equity funds. For holdings formed by selling equity funds to institutional investors, the upper limit of customer maintenance fees as a percentage of management fees remains at 30%, encouraging fund sales institutions to vigorously develop equity funds.

A relevant official from Tencent Fund Connect stated that this reform fully encourages the development of equity funds in fee structure settings, which will guide sales institutions to improve their service capabilities.

Professor Wu Fei noted that under the current investment boom, fee reductions help further promote equity fund development, while increasing long-term profit possibilities is a more effective way to enhance customer satisfaction.

Notably, this reform improves the full-chain supervision of public fund sales, takes into account the objective differences in business development models among different types of institutions, coordinates the consistency of various fee reforms, and focuses on building a new ecosystem for public fund sales development.

Sun Ning, General Manager of Personal Finance Department at Agricultural Bank of China, stated that the bank will earnestly implement public fund fee reforms, enrich product supply, strengthen technology empowerment, enhance win-win cooperation, and provide good investor accompaniment. Together with fund managers and investors, they will jointly build a new ecosystem with better structure, superior service, enhanced experience, and greater resilience for high-quality development, contributing to the sustained and stable development of capital markets.

ICBC expressed that this reform is not only about reducing explicit fee rates but also about promoting the construction of an industry development ecosystem more aligned with investor interests. ICBC views this as an important opportunity to promote wealth management business transformation and enhance core competitiveness.

A relevant official from Tencent Fund Connect also stated that the company will continue to rely on fintech capabilities, practice the "finance for the people" concept, innovatively provide higher-quality products and personalized asset allocation services, genuinely enhance investor satisfaction, and assist the high-quality development of the public fund industry.

Regarding the impact of this reform on public fund sales formats, Song Ke, Executive Dean of Shenzhen Finance Institute for Advanced Study at Renmin University of China and Deputy Director of the International Monetary Institute, analyzed that first, for the public fund industry, it will substantially promote long-term transformation from a scale expansion profit model to a performance-driven long-term value model, making corporate assessment and fee mechanisms more market-oriented and promoting healthy industry development.

Second, for investors, besides directly reducing passive investment costs and transaction costs for investors and breaking fund managers' short-termism, it also helps strengthen investor protection and improve investor returns and experience.

Finally, sales institutions will also focus more on improving customer experience and enhancing service capabilities, providing investors with appropriate, flexible, scientific, and one-stop advisory services.