The Swiss promoters of a coordinated effort to develop the country's asset management industry have displayed a pronounced reluctance to go public with their concrete plans. This is about to change, according to information obtained by finews.com.
The recent announcement was grand and met with great anticipation: a number of Swiss investors are planning to hold a global conference on crypto financing. The conference is slated to take place in St. Moritz, in the days before the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2018.
Crypto Finance Conference evoked memories about something rather similar: The Swiss Bankers Association in 2015 announced it would organize such an event for the Swiss asset management initiative. The idea was to hold a conference in the spirit of a «Davos of Asset Management», also timed to coincided with the WEF and with the clear intention to attract prominent participants of the forum.
Intentional Silence
It never happened. The bid was buried in April 2016 in favor of the new Asset Management Platform. The fund association Sfama took over from the bankers’ association and Lorenz Arnet (pictured below) was installed as head of the initiative a year ago. Since then – nothing.
Intentional, says Sfama CEO Markus Fuchs: «We want to inform when the first achievements are there to be seen. This is a marathon and not a sprint.»
Steering Committee Priorities
The platform at least now can claim to have made the first steps. A steering committee has taken up its duties, with representatives from
- Banks: UBS, Credit Suisse, Vontobel, Zuercher Kantonalbank, Valiant, Raiffeisen and Pictet
- Asset Managers: Schroders, Partners Group, Capital Group and Blackrock
- Insurers: Baloise and Axa Winterthur.
The bankers’ association and Sfama also are represented.
Branding a Main Task
The members have agreed on three principles guiding the work of the platform:
- First: pension provision – Swiss asset management needs to establish its services with institutional investors across the globe.
- Second: exports – access to foreign markets remains a priority.
- Third: regulatory framework – the rules have to serve the needs of the industry and ease the burden on companies stemming from regulation.
The group will also work on questions of branding, the basis of all activities by asset management. The platform will go live in 2018, with its own corporate identity and Website, said Fuchs: «A working group is busy developing and a budget has been agreed.»
Important signs of life after a long period of silence.
