Innovest, the Vienna-based investment management arm of German multinational Siemens has launched two new institutional investment products in a vigorous push for more third party business this year.
The company, the former capital investment department spun off from Siemens in Austria last year will now offer outsourcing services to companies and pension funds seeking independent advice on asset management. Innovest is now part of Siemens Fi-nancial Services, which amongst oth-er services provides investment management advicefor the E31.57bn of assets that are managed against Sie-mens' pension liabilities worldwide.
Markus Stadlmann, CIO and CEO at Innovest, says: Our two new service systems 'Portfolio Monitoring' and 'Risk by Design' can be used by institutions without the necessary in-house experts, who have more complex needs than the services generally provided by KAGs and investment managers and who seek an independent oversight for their portfolios. 'Performance Monitoring' in its basic form includes various compliance activities, cost controlling and performance and risk measurement, mainly as an interface between the client and the investment manager or KAG." One of Austria's top five corporations and one of the largest pension funds are amongst Innovest's existing clients, and reaction to the new initiative has already been extremely positive in Austria, he says.
Stadlmann believes the depth of ex-perience and expertise within Inno-vest, both in the staff calibre and years of operating the Siemens pension fund, are proving to be major pluses in their pursuit of external business.
Apart from providing outsourcing services for institutional investors, Innovest still manages money for Siemens. "We already service 25 companies within the Siemens group using the new 'Siemensfondsnds' - for example Siemens Equity North America, which are no-load, low fee, multi-manager funds, so our expertise is there to see.""