Through the first two months of RRSP season, mutual fund net sales in 2015 are outpacing last year’s totals, according to the latest data from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC).

Overall industry net sales for February came in $10.8 billion, IFIC reports, pushing year-to-date net sales to $16.1 billion. This is up from 2014, when February brought net sales of $9.3 billion, and the first two months of the year generated $14.9 billion in net sales.

Long-term funds recorded net sales of $10.9 billion for February 2015, and reached $16.4 billion for the first two months of the year. Money market funds had net redemptions of $123.5 million in February, and $283.1 million so far this year.

By broad asset class, balanced funds continued to lead the way in February, with net sales of $8.6 billion, up from $4.40 billion in January. Year-to-date, balanced funds’ net sales total $12.9 billion, up from $12.1 billion for the same period last year.

Equity funds were a distant second, with net sales of almost $2 billion in February. Compared with last year, equity fund net sales for RRSP season are down. This year, net sales for equity funds through the first two months totals $2.55 billion, which is down from $3.6 billion for the same period in 2014.

Bond funds recorded a mere $2.6 million in net sales for February, down from $142.8 million in January. They were outpaced by specialty funds, which had $341.3 million in monthly net sales. However, for the first two months of the year, bond fund sales are at least in the black this year — in 2014 the bond category generated almost $800 million in net redemptions for January and February.

IFIC reports that total mutual fund assets under management (AUM) rose by 3.2% during the month to finish February at $1.2 trillion, up by $38 billion. Industry AUM is up by $172.3 billion, or 16.5%, over the past 12 months.

The data is compiled from IFIC and other sources, and aggregate totals are provided by Investor Economics.