When it comes to asset management distribution, retail is crushing it.

Today Casey Quirk, McLagan, the European Institute, and the U.S. Institute released the analysis 14th annual Performance Intelligence asset management benchmarking survey, drawn from executives with 110 investment management shops that collectively manage $28.2 trillion, out of the $67 trillion in worldwide asset management industry AUM.

"We have a questionnaire regarding financial metrics, business metrics, productivity and efficiency metrics," Jeff Levi, partner at Casey Quirk, tells MFWire. "We take that information and we analyze it."

The survey results show that retail utterly dominated net asset management flows in 2014: 124 percent of net new flows came from retail channels, while the institutional channel suffered net outflows. AUM-wise, retail stood at 40 percent of industry AUM at the end of 2014, while 60 percent was in institutional.

Total industry AUM rose 10.5 percent from 2013, mostly thanks to the markets. Yet revenue growth, 6.3 percent, didn't keep pace, and aggregate industry fees fell two basis points, to 48 bps. Operating margins rose again, this time to 34 percent. And passive strategies dominated net new flows, rising to 93 percent of inflows (and 26 percent of AUM) last year. 

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