The IMA says that overall net fund sales were £702m, the lowest since January 2013. The fall comes against a backdrop of a sharp dip in some equity markets and suggest investors cashed in their funds to avoid further losses or moved to less risky havens.
The UK Equity Income sector remained the best selling IMA sector for the fourth consecutive month with net retail sales of £606m.
Daniel Godfrey, IMA chief executive, said: "Following a strong first half of the year, retail sales of funds slowed in August and September, with retail investors declining to further increase their holdings of equity funds.
"However, there was wide variation in the experiences of different types of equity funds with UK and European funds seeing net outflows whilst Global and Asian equity funds doing better. Among UK equity funds, UK Equity Income funds had another good month whilst UK All Companies funds saw their biggest retail outflow ever."
Among the asset classes, property was the best-selling asset class in September with net retail sales of £315m. The last time it was the top-selling asset class was in March 2007, when it had net retail sales of £473m. Equity funds saw a small net retail outflow, the first such outflow since March 2013. Global equity funds were the best-selling with net retail sales of £255 million. Asia was the second best-selling with net retail sales of £163 million.
{desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile}
For the five fund platforms that provide data to the IMA (Cofunds, Fidelity, Hargreaves Lansdown, Skandia and Transact) net sales for September 2014 were £727 million. For the same five fund platforms, funds under management as at the end of September 2014 were £176 billion, compared with £154 billion a year earlier.
ISAs had the highest net sales at £275 million, followed by Unwrapped (£260 million), Personal Pensions (£198 million) and Insurance Bonds, which saw an outflow of £7 million.
Tracker funds saw net retail sales of £434 million, with funds under management of £87.8 billion as at the end of September 2014. Their overall share of industry funds under management was 10.8%, compared with 9.6% in September 2013.
Net retail sales of ethical funds were £34 million in September 2014, with funds under management of £9.6 billion. Their share of industry funds under management was 1.2%.