Amundi Group’s distribution platform Fund Channel has taken Caceis on board as a shareholder and now to plans to accelerate its growth in distribution in order to deliver on its ambition of nearly doubling its assets under intermediation by the end of 2025.
Amundi is Europe’s largest asset manager with some 1.86 trillion euro in assets under management. Since 2005, the firm has offered an open-architecture fund distribution platform called Fund Channel, designed as B2B platform for financial intermediaries.
“We facilitate the distribution of products from 600 asset managers to about 100 distributors and end investors (banks, asset managers, insurance companies) in Europe and Asia,” Pierre-Adrien Domon, Fund Channel’s managing director, told InvestmentOfficer.be.
Procurement centre
“To use a simple analogy, our role is similar to that of a procurement centre for the retail sector, with no restrictions on the product range for our distributors with more than 100,000 ISIN codes available on the platform. We contractually manage the financial and information flows between distributors and management companies,” said Domon (photo). “Over the years, our sector has consolidated around a handful of players that can serve clients in multiple countries, while more local platforms tend to get dumbed down.”
Fund Channel is currently the fourth largest distributor of third-party funds in Europe, with strong positions in France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. It serves a network of 600 asset managers and 100 distributors and has some 330 billion euro in assets under intermediation.
Accelerating distribution
On 15 September, Amundi announced an agreement with Caceis, a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole and Santander that specialises in orders, custody and administration of funds. The deal stipulates that Caceis will acquire one third of Fund Channel for an undisclosed amount. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this year, subject to regulatory approval. Amundi will remain the majority owner.
“The arrival of Caceis as one of our shareholders will allow us to grow the distribution business even faster,” Domon said. “The ambition of this transaction is to be able to combine the two services of Fund Channel and Caceis into a common value proposition for customers, eliminating the need to rely on multiple service providers.”
Ambitious goals
This alliance is also in line with the ambitions in Amundi’s Strategic Ambitions 2025 plan proposed in June 2022. Under that plan, the volume of funds distributed by Fund Channel will normally grow by 330 billion euro to more than 600 billion euro by the end of 2025.
“Our partnership with Caceis is one of the commercial levers we intend to use to achieve this goal,” said Domon.
Fund Channel also continues to grow organically with two deals announced in the Benelux in recent months, Domon pointed out.
“For example, we have added Nagelmackers to our client base in the Belgian market and we will distribute funds for ABN Amro’s private bank in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Germany.”
Lots of levers
Domon said there are currently many levers through which a player like Fund Channel can significantly boost its business. “There is a tendency to open up distribution networks to a wide range of management companies to offer the best products. Insurance companies are interested in the platform to suggest mutual funds to savers to plan their retirement.”
“And as the offering expands, it is easier for both distributors and management companies to have one central point of contact, instead of having to manage dozens of billing and reporting streams. By using a platform, operational costs can go down and all players can pool their investment projects.”
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