Institutional Shares

Institutional shares are a class of shares made available by mutual funds only to institutional investors. The owners of institutional shares must, then by definition of institutional shares, be in the business of holding and investing money and are companies such as banks, pension funds, insurance companies and investment funds. Institutional shares tend to carry no load or embedded marketing charges and therefore low or no 12b-1 fees. Institutional shares are often called Y shares or Y Class because the institutional shares are issued in a special letter class for these large institutional shares investors. Institutional shares often have a Y in their fund symbol. For example, institutional shares of Putnam Asset Allocation Funds Conservative Portfolio is denoted as PACYX. Mutual funds often offer exchanges between institutional shares of two different funds in their company as limited to institutional shares investors in a swap between two different Y Class institutional shares.