German institutional investors seem to be more focused on qualitative criteria when choosing external asset managers than their counterparts in Italy and France, according to the first consolidated report on European institutional asset management, co-ordinated by Invesco Continental Europe based on three independent surveys. The French and Italians consider performance and management fees first.
The study represents the viewpoints of 74 institutions in France, 33 in Germany and 24 in Italy, representing over E 500bn in assets.
“The reason for this research was to find out more about the different criteria that institutional investors apply when choosing managers,” says Andrew Miller, from the institutional sales and marketing team of Invesco.
Half of the respondents stated that they had increased the proportion of externally managed assets during the past year. More than 60% said that their assets had grown. This figure is significantly higher in France, with more than 80% of investors seeing their accounts get larger.
Regarding the use of consultants the responses varied. Both French (84%) and German (90%) investors see the role of consultants increasing, while in Italy only 20% share this opinion.
“We chose these three markets for this first survey but next year we’ll expand our coverage to Austria, Switzerland and maybe Benelux,” Miller says.