Uniqa Capital Markets, the asset management arm of Austrian insurer Uniqa, is opening its services to third-party institutional clients, building on its long-standing experience managing complex portfolios for regulated insurers across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).
Speaking to IPE, managing director Andreas Bertl said handling intricate asset allocations “for the most regulated institutional investors”, namely insurers, has always been core to the firm’s expertise.
“For insurers, private markets were one solution [in the low-interest rate environment] and after starting with infrastructure debt, we expanded our portfolio step by step to include more asset classes,” Bertl said. “Now we have a high process security and confidence.”
The Vienna-based manager oversees around €20bn in assets on behalf of Uniqa subsidiaries in Austria and more than a dozen countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
Bertl emphasised the firm’s credentials: “In those regions, we are offering asset management for one of the highest-regulated group of investors, the insurers, and we are offering our services also in complex asset classes.”
Uniqa Capital Markets has long contemplated offering its services beyond its in-house mandates. “Onboarding of additional clients is not a problem,” Bertl said, adding that structural and regulatory frameworks were already in place.
The firm believes that its regulatory resilience gives it a competitive edge in offering outsourced solutions to other institutional clients. “We are able to thread in heterogeneous regulations and comply with them,” Bertl said, referencing the intense compliance requirements insurers face.
While new clients are expected mainly in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) and CEE, the firm is MiFID-compliant and positioned to offer services across the European Economic Area and select additional markets.
“Regarding the size of new customers, we remain realistic: that means probably not very large institutions,” Bertl said. “Our strength comes from our experiences in our everyday business – that means more mid-size and small institutional investors with complex needs concerning the strategic asset allocation or complex asset classes, in particular private markets.”
The firm offers a broad service suite ranging from asset liability management (ALM) and strategic asset allocation (SAA) consulting, to full portfolio management, including compliance, reporting and ESG screening.
Foundations, in particular, have expressed interest in support of strategic portfolio construction, according to Bertl. “They often have not had an in-depth SAA consultation so far. With our help, they can now make substantiated investment decisions on a quantitative basis.”
To support its third-party growth ambitions, the company has hired Sandra Straka from Goldman Sachs Asset Management in Frankfurt, where she led the firm’s third-party wealth client business for Germany and Austria. She will assume a similar role in Vienna from July.
“Over the next three to four years, we want to reach €750m to €1bn,” Bertl said.
The latest digital edition of IPE’s magazine is now available
