Abstract: The commission division area of institutional investors is subjected to serious conflicts of interests. The developed countries represented by the United States have built a relatively complete regulatory system around the prevention of conflicts of interests, which focuses on such aspects as clarifying the scope of application and prohibition of the Safe Harbor clauses, strengthening the obligations of asset managers, clarifying information disclosure requirements, increasing the transparency of the commission divisions, strengthening the internal control over the brokerage business, etc., so as to minimize the occurrence of conflicts of interests. China’s supervision over the institutional commission divisions is relatively coarse in general, and the operability of the system is not strong enough. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate special regulatory rules for institutional commission divisions, raise the level of supervision, clarify the nature of fund brokerage commissions and the basic principles for fund managers to use brokerage commissions, strengthen their obligations and responsibilities, and improve the information disclosure and internal control of commission divisions.

Key words: commission split; soft dollar trading; institutional investors; securities investment funds