State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) and Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) have teamed up to provide index management services in Ireland.
“Irish pension funds are very sophisticated,” says Ronan Smith, head of index investing at BIAM in Dublin. “We know from our own experience that many of the funds are looking at passive management as a technique to provide stability.”
BIAM has been offering passive investing in agreement with Barclays Global Investors since September last year using a unitised consensus fund, where the assets are run passively in line with an appropriate index.
State Street introduced its passive investing capabilities in the Irish market signing an exclusivity agreement with Dublin-based asset managers Friends First to run their consensus fund. The exclusivity period of one year has now run out, but SsgA is still running the fund.