Ljubljana - Slovenian mutual funds managed assets worth a record EUR 4.337 billion at the end of 2021, up by a record EUR 1.101 billion annually, as investors seem to have increasingly opted for alternatives to bank deposits at a time of extremely low interest rates and newly-introduced fees for deposits of over EUR 100,000.

Slovenian mutual funds also attracted more investments due to rising stock prices at home and abroad, with the number of investors up almost 28,000 to nearly 494,160 last year, data from the Slovenian Agency for Securities Markets shows.

The last time payments into mutual funds increased at such a brisk rate was before the economic and financial crisis, in 2007, when they reached almost a billion euro.

The bulk of the assets managed by mutual funds were investments in foreign securities and bonds, amounting to over EUR 3.656 billion.

Net payments into mutual funds reached EUR 483.69 million, while mutual funds paid out the highest values in March (EUR 72.85 million) and December (EUR 60.5 million).

Despite the low interest rates and the fee for large deposits, Slovenian households' bank deposits rose by almost EUR 1.3 billion to EUR 23.7 million between December 2020 and October 2021, central bank data shows.