GERMANY – Investor inflows to German institutional funds (Spezialfonds) in the year to March 31 totalled €46bn, helping to bring the total volume of these funds to €635bn, according to German fund industry association BVI.

In a new set of statistics for Germany’s institutional market, BVI said another €159bn in assets were managed in an advisory capacity. As a result, the total volume of institutional assets invested in Germany was €794bn at the end of March.

The association noted that continued growth in Spezialfonds volume was partly due to the fact that “investors benefit from the tailor-made investment strategy of these funds”.

It added that growth in Spezialfonds was in no way hindered by the new International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

IFRS require that capital-market oriented institutional investors, like banks or insurers, disclose details of every Spezialfonds investment they make if these investments exceed 20% of their holdings.

Asset managers in Germany expect, therefore, that these investors will increasingly rely on mutual funds owing to the greater hassle and cost related to the IFRS requirement for Spezialfonds.

The BVI statistics also reflected that Allianz Global Investors retained its position as Germany’s biggest manager/administrator of institutional assets outside of real estate, with a 14.8% market share.

AGI was closely followed by Deutsche Asset Management, whose market share was 12.5% at the end of March. AMB Generali, the asset manager for the German-Italian insurance giant, took third place with 9.3%, followed by Deka (8.7%) and Union Investment (7.2%).

Regarding pure administration of institutional assets outside of real estate, AGI again was in the top slot, with a 13.5% share. AGI was trailed by DeAM (9.3%), AMB Generali (8.6%) and Universal-Investment (7.4%).

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