Growth in the coming year will be driven by private clients

The last quarter of 2013 allowed the largest management companies to strengthen their position in the trust management market using funds from pension funds and closed mutual funds. However, starting this year, opportunities in these segments are significantly narrowing, and managers can only more actively attract retail clients.

Photo: Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant / buy photo

On Friday, the National Rating Agency (NRA) published a preliminary rating of the largest management companies by the volume of assets under trust management at the end of last year. The total assets of 23 companies at the end of last year amounted to 2.38 trillion rubles. Compared to the third quarter, this figure increased by 3.6%. Most of the entire market, almost 52%, falls on the top five participants, the list of which has undergone minor changes. The management company Leader and TKB BNP Paribas Investment Partners (almost 214.5 billion rubles) remained in first and second places. In third place with an indicator of almost 214 billion rubles. Transfingroup came out, displacing VTB Capital Investment Management, whose assets under management amounted to 208 billion rubles. Due to a decrease in the volume of assets under management, the Gazprombank group dropped out of the top 5 (RUB 149.2 billion). As NRA points out, the decline was caused by the completion of large individual investment projects. In particular, in October last year it was decided to terminate the Gazprombank - Telecommunications hedge fund, whose net assets exceeded 11 billion rubles.

The main increase in assets in the collective investment market was provided by institutional investors. The largest contribution was made by pension reserves and savings of non-state pension funds, market participants note. According to Dmitry Blagov, CEO of Trinfico, active work with clients in this category allowed the company to increase its assets under management by 7 billion rubles in the fourth quarter. (54% of total asset growth). “In the fourth quarter there were good results from all categories of investors, but more than half came from institutional investors,” notes Raiffeisen Capital CEO Vladimir Solovyov.

Another important group of assets for managers remains funds raised in mutual investment funds (UIFs). However, the growth of NAV in funds occurred mainly due to closed mutual funds. “Closed-end funds gave an increase in assets of 6 billion rubles, including by attracting clients to new funds,” notes Dmitry Blagov. Open mutual funds showed a less significant increase in assets. According to Vladimir Solovyov, the sales volume of retail mutual funds at the end of the year was a record for the last several years. According to NLU, at the end of the fourth quarter of 2013, among the leaders in attracting funds to retail mutual funds were Raiffeisen Capital, Alfa Capital, Sberbank Asset Management and Russian Standard.

The current year will be difficult for the collective investment market, says Eileen Santey, head of the trust management business at Gazprombank - Asset Management. “Market conditions have become more complicated after a number of documents were adopted at the end of last year that changed the rules in the pension market,” notes Vladimir Kirillov, general director of TKB BNP Paribas Investment Partners. In December 2013, laws were adopted according to which pension savings will not be formed in 2014, and the managers will not receive savings for the second half of 2013. However, there are savings left on the market that have already been received by non-state pension funds (at the end of the third quarter - 976.5 billion rubles), and management companies will fight hard for them.

Under these conditions, some management companies are focusing on attracting people to mutual funds. “It will not be possible to maintain the pace of attracting pension savings from previous years in 2014. Therefore, management companies in the coming year will have to focus on other segments of trust management,” says Vladimir Solovyov. “In the coming year, we can expect continued high demand for funds for retail clients and a serious increase assets in these products." According to Alfa Capital CEO Irina Krivosheeva, this year the company will continue to develop its business, primarily in such segments as retail and individual trust management.

Vitaly Gaidaev

The managers divided the savings