A fund share class is one of the categories of share or unit issued by a single investment fund, a subject covered in the main entry on share classes of mutual funds. All classes of a fund invest in the same portfolio, but each has its own terms, and therefore its own price. This entry explains how the wider term is used across fund types.
Outside the United States mutual fund market, where classes are mainly distinguished by sales charges, classes differ in several ways. They may carry different management fees for retail and institutional investors, pay out income or accumulate it, be denominated in different currencies, or set different minimum investments. A hedged class uses share class hedging to reduce the effect of exchange rate movements between the class currency and the fund's base currency. Hedge funds and private funds use classes or series to separate investors who are subject to different fee terms or who joined at different times.
Each class has its own identifier and its own net asset value per share, calculated in fund accounting by allocating class-specific fees and hedging results to that class alone. In a fund sold as tokenised fund units, a tokenised class may sit alongside conventional classes of the same fund.