Mr Curtis, whose chief focus was sub-advisory mandates in his role as co-head of UK third-party retail sales at MLIM, will report to Nick Phillips, GSAM’s head of third-party distribution.
He challenged the common view that the sub-advisory markets of the UK and northern Europe were mature by claiming that the bulk of the £18,000bn (€26,000bn) of UK insurance assets was still being run in-house by internal fund managers.
Mr Curtis said: “It is an immature market. We are seeing the opening up of insurers to best-in-class investment management. Apart from Skandia, most insurers had their first taste of open architecture only in the last five years. Probably [the provision of] stakeholder pensions was their first experience of using fund links or some kind of outside investment proposition.”
He argued that of the £65bn of insurance premiums gathered by UK insurers every year, less than 3 per cent was farmed out to external managers.
By contrast, he said 50 per cent of annual insurance premiums in the US and 30 per cent of such inflows in Australia were being outsourced. Lloyd Reynolds, executive director and head of European marketing strategy at GSAM, commented: “The sub-advisory market in Europe is set to expand over the next few years as manufacturers and distributors focus on their core competencies.
“We have tended to focus on continental Europe and we have not proactively focused on the UK market. Despite that we still think we are probably the largest sub-advisory manager in the UK market with about $4-5bn of assets under management.”
He added that the appointment of Mr Curtis was evidence that the UK market now merited closer attention.
HS
