One way American Funds suck

My current employer uses American Funds as its 401k provider. So I went to AmericanFunds.com to figure out how to get myself a login, and clicked on "Employer-Sponsored Plans" and then "Your Account," which landed me at https://www.americanfunds.com/account/login.htm, where I tried to set up an account and couldn't. I finally called an 800 number and after a while the woman tells me that I should be going to a different web site altogether, over at http://pr.retire.americanfunds.com/home.htm. When I went there I signed up and saw my account, etc. All good.

Now Institutional Investor ranks American Funds' parent company, the 3rd biggest Asset Manager in America with $1.55 trillion under management, after Barclay's and State Street but ahead of Fidelity and Vanguard, and I'm pretty sure that on the straight mutual fund side American is in the pole position. I don't know where they are in terms of 401k assets, but I can tell you they're not doing themselves a favor with their navigation. And they should synch up their color schemes too! Any old Estonian phishing scheme would do better matching look and feel across the site.

It's hard to stay at the top of the asset management ranks. Fidelity was up top for a while, then Magellan and Contrafund faltered and it fell back. Will American Funds be the next to regress to the mean? Stay tuned.