Collective investment trusts (CIT funds)

A collective investment trust, or CIT, is a pooled fund run by a bank or trust company for retirement plans and certain other institutional investors. They’re also called collective funds or commingled trusts.

How a CIT differs from a mutual fund or ETF

• Who can buy it. Mainly eligible retirement plans, such as 401(k) plans. The public can’t buy one in a brokerage account.
• Who oversees it. The trustee is a bank or trust company, overseen by banking regulators, and ERISA applies when it holds plan assets. It isn’t registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
• What it publishes. There’s no SEC prospectus. Information comes from the trustee’s own documents, and many CITs have no ticker.
• Cost. With lower registration and distribution costs, a CIT can cost less than a similar mutual fund, and fees are often negotiated by plan size. It depends on the fund and the plan.

Why CITs are hard to look up

Without a ticker or an SEC filing, a CIT doesn’t appear on Form 13F as an ETF does. The best public trace is a retirement plan’s annual Form 5500, where larger plans may list their investments, often with the fund’s name spelled in different ways.

See which plans hold a CIT

Our retirement plan search looks through the investments plans list in their filings, matching every spelling that has all the words you type. Only plans that itemize their holdings can appear.