Largest Mutual Fund Companies by Assets Under Management
Last updated: February 2026
The Concentration Story Most Advisors Miss
The raw numbers are impressive enough: the 10 largest fund companies in the United States collectively manage the majority of all fund assets. But the real story is how rapidly this concentration has accelerated. According to the Investment Company Institute, the five largest firms controlled just 35 percent of fund assets at year-end 2005. By year-end 2023, that figure had reached 56 percent. Morningstar’s 2024 Fund Family 150 Digest puts an even finer point on it: Vanguard, BlackRock, and Fidelity alone account for roughly 51 percent of fund assets under management in the United States, with Capital Group (American Funds) adding another 8 percent. The top five firms now absorb approximately 63 percent of total fund AUM.
For financial advisors, this concentration has practical consequences that go well beyond industry trivia. It shapes fund availability, influences expense ratios across the industry, determines the liquidity of the products you recommend, and creates competitive dynamics that directly affect client outcomes.
The Largest Fund Companies: Current Rankings
The table below shows the largest asset management firms and their approximate total assets under management as of mid-2025, drawn from public filings, firm disclosures, and industry research. Total AUM includes mutual funds, ETFs, institutional accounts, and other managed vehicles.
| Rank | Company | Approximate Total AUM | Primary Fund Brands |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | BlackRock | $12.5 trillion | iShares ETFs, BlackRock Funds |
| 2 | Vanguard | $10.1 trillion | Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs |
| 3 | Fidelity Investments | $5.9 trillion | Fidelity funds, managed by Geode Capital (index) |
| 4 | State Street Global Advisors | $4.7 trillion | SPDR ETFs |
| 5 | J.P. Morgan Asset Management | $3.7 trillion | JPMorgan funds |
| 6 | Goldman Sachs Asset Management | $3.3 trillion | Goldman Sachs funds |
| 7 | Capital Group | $3.1 trillion | American Funds |
| 8 | Invesco | $1.9 trillion | Invesco funds, QQQ ETF |
Sources: WTW Thinking Ahead Institute Global 500 (year-end 2024), firm disclosures, Morningstar. AUM figures are rounded and reflect total managed assets across all vehicles, not exclusively mutual fund assets. Verify current figures through each firm’s most recent quarterly report.
How the Landscape Has Shifted
To appreciate the scale of the current leaders, consider the industry they operate in. US mutual fund total net assets reached $28.5 trillion at year-end 2024, according to the ICI. By November 2025, that figure had climbed to $31.3 trillion. When you add ETFs (which crossed $10 trillion in total net assets for the first time in 2024), the US fund market is approaching $40 trillion in combined assets. Worldwide, regulated open-end funds hold more than $70 trillion in total net assets, and the US represents roughly 53 percent of that global total despite accounting for only 7 percent of individual fund offerings.
Compare the current AUM figures to 2016, when BlackRock managed approximately $4.7 trillion and Vanguard oversaw $3.0 trillion. In roughly a decade, BlackRock’s assets have nearly tripled. Vanguard’s have more than tripled. The growth is not just a rising-tide story driven by bull markets. These firms have captured an outsized share of net new flows, primarily through low-cost index products.
The number that best captures this shift: at year-end 2024, the top 20 global asset managers controlled 47 percent of total AUM among the world’s 500 largest firms, up from 45.5 percent just one year earlier. Their combined assets reached $65.8 trillion, with 15 US-based firms representing nearly 84 percent of that segment.
The shift in industry structure is visible in the concentration data that the ICI tracks over time.
| Grouping | 2005 | 2016 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Largest Fund Families | 35% | 45% | 56% |
| 10 Largest Fund Families | 48% | 55% | ~65% |
| Firms Ranked 11–25 | 21% | ~18% | ~14% |
Source: ICI Investment Company Fact Book (2024 and 2025 editions). Figures represent share of total US-registered investment company assets.
The pattern is striking. The top five firms gained 21 percentage points of market share in less than two decades. Much of that gain came directly at the expense of mid-tier firms (those ranked 11 through 25), whose collective share shrank considerably over the same period.
Why the Giants Keep Growing
Two structural forces are driving this concentration, and advisors who understand them can make better product selection decisions.
The first force is the dominance of index investing. The 10 largest fund complexes manage the substantial majority of all index mutual fund and ETF assets. Actively managed domestic equity mutual funds experienced outflows in every year after 2005, according to the ICI, while index domestic equity mutual funds attracted inflows in most of those same years. Because index products tend to concentrate at the low end of the expense spectrum, the firms with the greatest scale enjoy a compounding advantage: larger asset bases allow lower expense ratios, lower expense ratios attract more assets, and the cycle reinforces itself. This is precisely why Vanguard, with its unique mutual ownership structure that passes profits back to shareholders through lower fees, has grown so dramatically.
The second force is the ETF revolution. ETF net share issuance crossed $1 trillion for the first time in 2024, and total ETF net assets crossed $10 trillion. The industry launched 757 new ETFs that year alone, a 46 percent increase over the previous record set in 2023. Because ETF creation requires significant infrastructure and regulatory expertise, and because ETF liquidity depends on trading volume (which favors established products), the largest sponsors enjoy substantial competitive advantages. BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard’s ETF suite, and State Street’s SPDR family together account for approximately 74 percent of the equity ETF market.
The conversion trend adds another dimension. It has become increasingly common for asset managers to convert open-end mutual funds to ETFs, with nearly 90 such conversions occurring between 2021 and 2024. Dimensional Fund Advisors, for example, converted seven of its tax-managed mutual funds to ETFs, recognizing the structural tax advantages of the ETF wrapper for taxable accounts. This trend favors the firms with the operational scale to execute conversions smoothly and the distribution networks to maintain asset levels through the transition. Some smaller fund companies have attempted ETF conversions only to discover that the lack of trading volume in a new ETF undermines the very liquidity advantage that motivated the switch.
What This Means for Your Practice
Industry concentration creates both opportunities and risks for financial advisors and their clients.
On the opportunity side, the competitive pressure among large firms has driven expense ratios to historic lows. The asset-weighted average expense ratio for equity mutual funds fell to 0.40 percent in 2024, according to the ICI. Equity mutual funds in the lowest expense quartile now hold 81 percent of all equity mutual fund assets. Your clients are direct beneficiaries of this price competition, and you should be aware of just how far fees have fallen when evaluating any fund that charges above-average expenses.
On the risk side, concentration raises questions about due diligence and diversification at the firm level. When an advisor builds a portfolio using products from just two or three fund families, they may be concentrating operational risk even while achieving investment diversification. Fund company solvency is rarely a practical concern for regulated products (assets are held by independent custodians), but the reliance on a handful of firms for index construction, trading infrastructure, and proxy voting does create systemic considerations that sophisticated advisors should recognize.
The decline in fund sponsors also matters. The number of firms competing in the US fund market fell from 879 at year-end 2015 to 787 at year-end 2024. That net decrease represents 433 new entrants and 519 exits. For advisors seeking differentiated strategies or specialized mandates, the shrinking competitive landscape means the search for distinctive managers requires more effort than it did a decade ago.
Perhaps the most practical takeaway involves the client conversation about fees. When a client asks why they should pay 0.75 percent for an actively managed fund when Vanguard or Fidelity offers a comparable index product for 0.015 percent, the advisor needs to articulate a clear, credible case for the active manager’s value proposition. That case exists for certain strategies and market segments, but it requires genuine analytical skill to make it. The days of defaulting to actively managed funds without rigorous justification are over, and the dominance of low-cost providers is the reason why.
The Advisor’s Edge
The data on this page is freely available. Any client with an internet connection can look up which firms manage the most money. What distinguishes a professional advisor is the ability to translate these numbers into better portfolio decisions. That means understanding how expense ratio compounding over 20 or 30 years erodes returns, recognizing when fund family concentration creates hidden operational risks, evaluating whether a high-fee active manager provides genuine alpha or just closet indexing at a premium price, and coaching clients through the behavioral impulse to chase the largest or most popular funds rather than the most appropriate ones.
These analytical skills are at the core of what the IBF’s Certified Fund Specialist® (CFS®) designation develops. The CFS program trains advisors to move beyond surface-level data and apply rigorous fund evaluation frameworks in real client situations. Explore the CFS designation or request more information.
Sources and Notes
AUM figures compiled from firm disclosures, WTW Thinking Ahead Institute Global 500 Report (2025), Morningstar Fund Family 150 Digest (2024), and the ICI Investment Company Fact Book (2024 and 2025 editions). Total assets under management include mutual funds, ETFs, institutional accounts, and other managed vehicles; mutual fund-only AUM would be lower for firms with large institutional and ETF businesses. Industry concentration percentages reflect US-registered investment company assets as reported by ICI. All figures should be verified against the most recent quarterly reports from each firm and the ICI’s statistical releases at ici.org/research/stats.