New launches to stem Swedish slowdown

Launching good products and marketing them efficiently is a priority in the mature Swedish retail fund market, according to Mats Lagerqvist, CEO at Robur, Swedbank’s fund management arm. “We see quite a future stable growth in the Swedish fund market because a lot of money comes through the pension system. But outside that, net inflows in funds are decreasing, unlike what happened in the 1990s, when a lot of investors shifted their money from deposit accounts to mutual funds,” said Mr Lagerqvist. In order to overcome the challenge, the company has embarked in a series of fund launches that are going to continue through the whole year. “We have decided to speed up the product development process and shorten our time to market. This year we are going to launch 10 to 12 funds, one type of product per month,” he added. Mr Lagerqvist continued: “It is impossible today to launch a plain vanilla equity fund. Nobody wants to invest in it,” he said. “Investors want to invest either in high risk equity funds or in low risk products such as guaranteed products or hedge funds. There we see the biggest demand if we look at the retail market.” This year the firm has already launched a guaranteed product, a high risk equity fund BRICT, which includes Turkey, in addition to Brazil, Russia India and China, and a “momentum fund”, reckoning that the fund “should invest in those markets that have had the best performance in the last months,” said Mr Lagerqvist. Robur has reportedly the largest market share in mutual funds in Sweden with assets under management which last month increased to SKr606bn (?66bn) following the deal with Swedish Insurance company Folksam to manage ?20bn of its assets. Swedbank Robur will also acquire Folksam Fond, with assets under manager of about SEKr27bn.

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