The latest round of central bank interest-rate cuts and quantitative-easing extensions will bring some relief to asset managers suffering in the wake of the Brexit vote by further strengthening the case for buying into funds instead of holding cash, according to the latest issue of The Cerulli Edge-European Monthly Product Trends Edition.
While global analytics firm Cerulli Associates is confident that the UK’s decision to leave the European Union is not a game changer, it acknowledges that the fund groups worst affected by the summer’s outflows may have to increase marketing efforts to convince investors to return and to find new investors.
“Most firms are not expecting the outflows, which admittedly were very large, to be magically reversed in the next month. However, they have already stabilized and most industry watchers expect the second half of the year to show a more positive trend,” says Barbara Wall, Europe managing director at Cerulli Associates, adding that the resultant shakeout may intensify the pressure on fees.
Cerulli does not believe that the passporting and UCITS-labelling rights of UK firms with funds domiciled in Luxembourg and Dublin, but managed out of London, will be withdrawn. Any new conditions attached to these rights will, it says, be minimal.
“The EU would have little incentive to deprive itself of the expertise of Europe’s biggest financial center, or to risk restrictions being placed on the export of EU goods and services into the UK,” says Wall, who believes that providers of passive vehicles may be the biggest beneficiaries as the market returns to some sort of normality.
For Funds Society, Madrid