Account statements

Although every mutual fund provides shareholders with periodic reports on their investments, the quality, understandability, and comprehensiveness of these reports vary widely. Most mutual fund families provide quarterly statements that let you know what your current investment balance is, how many shares you own in each fund you’ve invested in, and your current asset allocation (that is, what percentage of your money is invested in which types of funds). In addition, the statement lists the transactions on your account since the last statement — new share purchases and redemptions; switching of money from one fund to another; dividend reinvestments; capital gain distributions, and so on.
If you have more than one mutual fund investment with the same family, you typically receive a combined statement showing all of your holdings rather than a separate statement for each fund. You also get a year-end statement for tax purposes, which shows balances and account activity for the entire year. The account statements provided by most mutual fund companies provide the basics; only a few offer the luxuries. Dalbar, Inc., an independent financial research company located in Boston, has developed quality rankings for account statements from various mutual fund companies. According to Dalbar, the top account statements, in ranking order, come from the following fund companies:
_ The WM group of funds
_ Kemper Funds
_ Montgomery Funds
_ The Dreyfus family of funds
_ The MFS family of funds
Why did Dalbar rank the WM Funds at the top of its list? Beyond the basics, WM provides investors with such data as their beginning and ending account balance for the statement period, the total account value, and the total return percentage per fund.
For investors who participate in the company’s asset allocation advisory services program, WM Funds reports the total return on investors’ asset allocation portfolios — a collection of investments in various categories that shifts over time in response to changes in market and economic conditions. Eventually, WM hopes to provide investors with personalized returns under this program, showing total return on a shareholder’s own asset allocation account. Like most good fund companies, WM is constantly looking for ways to apply new information technology to communicate data to investors more quickly and usefully.