The institutional asset management subsidiary of German regional bank Nord/LB has grown its assets to more than €17bn, as of the end of June, up from €15.4bn at year-end 2013.

Nord/LB said 20% of the increase in the first half was down to inflows from Versorgungswerke, corporates and banks.

One major addition to the subsidiary’s assets was the first real estate debt fund it issued this spring, in cooperation with Deutsche Hypothekenbank for an unnamed German institutional investor.

In total, the fund has more than €200m invested in real estate financing backed by “high-quality real estate in Deutsche Hypo’s core markets”.

Over the first six months of 2014, Nord/LB issued four new open-ended funds – or Publikumsfonds – for institutional investors, three of which were regional REITs covering the EMEA, the US and Asia Pacific, respectively.

The fourth was a regional index fund tracking stock markets in developed countries of the Pacific region.

In other news, the Netherlands’ KAS Bank has vowed to become investment service-provider market leader for the German pensions industry.

It said it aimed to increase its market share in the country, where it first established a presence in 2010, to 10% among pension funds over the next five years.

KAS Bank’s German division said it would target all pension providers, including Pensionskassen, Versorgungswerke, Pensionsfonds and insurers, as well as “corporate investors with assets between €200m and €3bn”.

The Dutch company said it expected opportunities to arise from “major upheavals” resulting from regulatory reforms such as IORP II and Solvency II.

It said the changes resulting from these reforms would lead to “considerable additional effort and costs for German IORPs, Versorgungswerke and Pensionskassen”.

It added that many of the mooted changes had already been implemented in the Dutch market, and said it wanted to bring this know-how to Germany.