MMF Assets Highest Since Jan. '11
ICI's latest weekly "Money Market Fund Assets" report shows that MMF levels rose for the second straight week, breaking into the black year-to-date and rising to their highest level since January 2011. The release says, "Total money market fund assets increased by $7.53 billion to $2.76 trillion for the week ended Wednesday, February 17, the Investment Company Institute reported today. Among taxable money market funds, government funds increased by $13.40 billion and prime funds decreased by $6.88 billion. Tax-exempt money market funds increased by $1.00 billion." It continues, "Assets of retail money market funds increased by $2.94 billion to $1.02 trillion. Among retail funds, government money market fund assets increased by $3.87 billion to $374.77 billion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $370 million to $465.88 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets decreased by $560 million to $178.94 billion. Assets of institutional money market funds increased by $4.59 billion to $1.74 trillion. Among institutional funds, government money market fund assets increased by $9.53 billion to $878.27 billion, prime money market fund assets decreased by $6.51 billion to $798.99 billion, and tax-exempt fund assets increased by $1.57 billion to $65.93 billion." ICI notes, "In anticipation of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) new money market fund regulations, many advisers are changing their prime money market funds into government money market funds. As a result, there have been, and will continue to be, large shifts in assets from prime funds to government funds before the October 2016 deadline." Year-to-date through Feb. 17, MMF assets are up $4 billion. Prime assets total $1.265 trillion, just slightly more than Treasury/Government assets, which stand at $1.253 trillion. In other news, the FDIC issued a press release, entitled, "FDIC Board Approves Proposal on Deposit Account Recordkeeping Requirements to Facilitate Timely Access to Deposits in Large Bank Failures." It says, "The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today approved a proposal for recordkeeping requirements for FDIC-insured institutions with a large number of deposit accounts to facilitate rapid payment of insured deposits to customers if the institutions were to fail. The proposed rule would apply to insured depository institutions with more than 2 million deposit accounts. Under the proposal, these institutions would generally be required to maintain complete and accurate data on each depositor. Further, the institutions would be required to ensure that their information technology systems are capable of calculating the amount of insured money for each depositor within 24 hours of a failure."
