The Financial Times reports that Vanguard’s assets under management have surged past $6 trillion for the first time. In the investment business, the biggest rarely means the best.
Big funds and big investment managers have fewer opportunities to choose from, and bigger funds are harder to maneuver.
Do You Think Your Business Really Matters to Vanguard?
Even if you have a $1 million portfolio with Vanguard, your business means almost nothing to the firm. They have $6 trillion under management. There are 5,999,999 other $1 millions in $6 trillion.
Think about that the next time you make a call to Vanguard. The gal in the call center doesn’t care about your business. Close your $1 million account, and Vanguard will replace the outflows in 41 seconds.
That’s no joke. Last year Vanguard brought in $268 billion in new cash for an average of $1.06 billion each business day. Divide that by the 12 hours per day that Vanguard is open and Vanguard is looking at inflows of almost $1.5 million every minute.
If you want somebody who cares about you, somebody you can trust to help you and your family achieve your financial goals, and somebody who cares about your business, the boutique investment advisory business has long been the best option for investors like you.
Vanguard has simply gotten too big for any one individual investor to matter to the firm, and there are no signs of that growth letting up.
You can read more about Vanguard’s massive size in the Financial Times article here.
