Fiduciary managers currently manage than 80% of Dutch pension fund assets, with the majority of mandates (68.9%) being ‘full service’ and another 14.6% partial or ‘modular’ fiduciary mandates, according to a survey conducted by IPE sister publication IPNederland.

The sixth annual IPNederland Fiduciary Management Survey canvassed more than 50 trustees and pension fund managers representing 46 corporate, occupational and industry-wide pension funds with assets ranging from €123m to €145bn, and with total assets worth €278.4bn.

According to the survey, just 16% of pension fund assets in the Netherlands is not currently covered by any sort of fiduciary management arrangement.

Further, just 0.5% of assets under management (AUM) is currently ‘in the market’ for fiduciary management, with 0.17% of assets available for full service mandates and 0.31% for partial mandates.

IPN said these figures suggested the Dutch fiduciary market had matured.

IPN’s survey, in addition to an analysis in terms of AUM, also showed how the Dutch fiduciary market has evolved in terms of the number of pension funds taking a fiduciary approach.

In 2013, 43.5% of funds surveyed said they were employing a full-service fiduciary manager, an increase of more than 5 percentage points from the previous year (over 38%).

The percentage of schemes using partial fiduciary mandates remained largely unchanged at 17.4% (2012: 17.6%).

Overall, the percentage of schemes using fiduciary management increased from 56% in 2012 to slightly less than 61% in 2013.

The number of schemes that do not use a fiduciary manager at present or have no plans to do so in future has also risen, from more than 32.3% in 2012 to 34.8% in 2013.

The percentage of schemes that intend to hire a fiduciary manager in future has, by contrast, fallen sharply, from 11.7% in 2012 to just 4.4% in 2013 – another indication the market has developed fully, IPN said.