Resumen en español

The extraordinary worldwide growth of collective investment in recent decades deserves to be analysed in some depth. For this reason, this project aims to provide a brief overview of the importance of mutual funds for Colombian society. The history of Colombian mutual funds has been accompanied by the regulation development of these institutions. Therefore, this project differentiates two stages (beginning, and development – expansion), which are marked by the entry into force of the Decree 2175 of 2007. In each of these stages, the mutual fund market has had an extraordinary growth. These results are shown in the description of the main figures of the collective investment market in recent years. Finally, the comparative study of Colombian mutual fund market to other markets allows us to confirm the good performance of the Colombian market, because it had shown higher increases than other Latin American countries analyzed.