Swiss pension funds are increasingly aware they must not be seen as captive clients of the country’s largest banks, a locally active currency manager has argued.
James Wood-Collins, chief executive at Record Currency Management, attributed some of his company’s growth in Swiss hedging mandates to an increasing awareness of the counterparty risk inherent in employing the custodian bank to safeguard against currency fluctuations.
According to IPE’s annual survey of managers of Swiss institutional assets, the company has seen local institutional assets increase from €14bn to €25.4bn, while assets managed on behalf of pension clients more than doubled to €22bn in the nine months to the end of June.
Despite such concerns, asset managers associated with two of Switzerland’s largest banks – UBS Global Asset Management and Credit Suisse Asset Management – have seen their assets under management increase in the nine months since September 2013.
The IPE survey showed that UBS Global AM had seen its share of Swiss pension assets increase from €38.6bn to €52.7bn over the period. Assets disclosed by Credit Suisse AM were harder to compare across 2014 and 2013’s surveys, as the company did not disclose like-for-like data. However, it said corporate and institutional Swiss clients entrusted it with €215bn at the end of June 2014.
