This is a sponsored article from M&G Investments.

Amy Cho – the doyenne of asset management in Asia – is charting a bold new course for the UK manager’s regional expansion. “We’re serious, we’re sincere and we’re here for the long haul,” she says. She also has a glint in her eye. Here’s why.

Fifteen months after taking the helm, there’s more than a hint of barely suppressed excitement about Amy Cho, chief executive officer and head of Asia Pacific at M&G Investments (M&G). It’s not just the two Asian Private Banker (APB) Asset Management Awards that M&G won in late 2024 that are firing her enthusiasm. It’s more than that. In an over-populated and hyper-competitive industry, she believes she’s building an innovative and clearly differentiated strategy to separate M&G from the crowd.

“We are aiming high in Asia,” she said in a January 2025 interview with APB. “We can see a clear route to doubling our regionally sourced AUM of US$16 billion.” How will she get there? Key to achieving M&G’s accelerated growth will be advancing its pioneering march into the mass affluent market through close partnerships with the region’s top retail banks.

Partnering for retail success

This began in October 2023 with the launch of 10 of its Luxembourg-registered UCITS funds in Singapore. A partnership with OCBC Bank in March 2024 marked M&G’s first retail bank collaboration, resulting in the launch of its flagship fixed income solution on the bank’s platform. This alliance was itself the fruit of M&G’s longstanding relationship with OCBC’s wholly owned private banking subsidiary Bank of Singapore (BOS). “We’d worked with BOS for many years behind the scenes as a trusted distributor of our funds,” said Cho. “When we partnered with OCBC, this allowed us to build on that relationship, with BOS commending us to its parent bank.”

It’s evidently going well. M&G has been able to use its funds’ popularity in Singapore to extend its distribution relationship with OCBC to Malaysia – via a white-labelled product alongside BOS Wealth Management Malaysia. Further, pending final approval from the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong, M&G expects to launch its retail funds in the Special Administrative Region by the end of the first quarter of 2025. M&G is also exploring cross-border opportunities in China through the qualified domestic institutional investor (QDII) scheme.

The boldness of these moves has captured the attention of other asset management companies intrigued by the success of this enhanced partnership strategy. Though long recognised as a successful partner to private banks – its funds are distributed by more than 20 private banks in the region – M&G had not previously been known for partnering with retail banks. “They’ve been asking how we have been able to build and allocate the necessary resources to serve retail as well as private bank clients,” said Cho.

The secret? “It’s not about the quantity of people you devote to these relationships; it’s about their quality. And it’s about agility and building trust. Different bank partners have different service needs, business priorities and end-client demands. We have to adapt to these sensitively and be more embedded in the local markets to build the trust necessary to ensure success.”

M&G has been quick to reward those responsible with promotion as part of what Cho calls a “rejuvenation” of its intermediaries team in Asia. Alfred Foo was promoted to head of intermediary distribution for Southeast Asia in October 2024. Kristy Wong was appointed head of intermediary distribution for Greater China in the same month. Prior to joining, she had held a number of leadership roles at, among other firms, PineBridge Investments and Schroder Investment Management.

Cherishing originality

With its 94-year history since launching Europe’s first mutual fund in the UK, Cho is apt to celebrate M&G’s boldness and originality in Asia as key features of its differentiated presence. “We’re just a bit different to other traditional managers,” she explained. “For starters, unlike most, we’ve been both an asset owner and asset manager for decades.

“This guarantees a strong alignment of our interests with those of our clients because we have skin in the game. It is a competitive advantage as a highly compelling proposition for external investors when new strategies are invested in by our own book of assets. We have a long-term proven capability in managing money, capturing alpha and managing risk in public and private markets both for ourselves and for our clients.”

There’s also M&G’s non-traditional start to life in Asia. Unlike most of its global competitors, it began life in Asia as an investor – not a distributor – when it established a real estate investment business in Singapore in 2006. It has subsequently built on-the-ground investment and distribution capabilities in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Australia, and secured a securities investment consulting enterprise (SICE) licence from the Financial Supervisory Commission in Taiwan in 2023.

Its roots in real estate investment in Asia similarly echo its over-sized presence in global alternative investments relative to many traditional managers. While the latter have to run fast and improvise as they look to generate their credentials in alternatives, M&G has built a US$100 billion portfolio spanning private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure.

“Private markets are part of our history, our tradition and our culture,” said Cho. “In fact, they’re embedded in our DNA. The life insurance portfolios that we’ve been managing since our inception have a natural need for long-term and stable assets to match their long-term liabilities. That’s why real estate alone accounted for more than US$40 billion of our global AUM as of June 2024.”

Innovation rewarded

Perhaps uncoincidentally, a rich vein of perceived otherness and innovative thinking runs through the reasons behind APB’s decision to award M&G as Best Fund Provider for 2024 in both its Global Bond (intermediate to long term) and Emerging Market categories.

As Daniel Shane, editor at APB, noted of the global bond award: “What really stood out about M&G Optimal Income Fund was the originality and flexibility of the manager’s approach. And when I say flexibility, I really mean flexibility. This is one of the few solutions where the manager can invest, effectively benchmark-unconstrained, from zero to 100% in any issue, credit exposure, market or currency. This makes it a very well-differentiated product for private banks’ HNW and UHNW clientele.

“The manager has also been commendably unafraid to make non-consensus calls. It stood out from the crowd as a result. We liked that they shortened duration in 2021 and lengthened duration in 2022 – which were by no means consensus calls at the time – because they correctly believed there were long-term returns on offer.”

Cho said the awards were a credit to the strength and depth of M&G’s global bond coverage, evidenced by its recognition as one of Europe’s leading fixed income investors with one of the largest fundamental credit research teams in the industry.

“APB awards mark the pinnacle of achievement in asset management,” she said. “We are particularly pleased to receive two in the fixed income space because this is a core competence, building off our long-established public fixed income capabilities to provide solutions across the credit and maturity spectrums. The awards are a true testament to our strength and performance excellence.”

And then there’s that ad!

Further proof that M&G is prepared to do things differently came with the late 2024 release – largely on social media platforms – of a branding video that is garnering industry-wide praise for its genre-busting wit and subversive originality. Take a look.

Finally there’s an asset management company’s promotional video you can laugh with rather than at.

Click on to discover M&G Investments’ award winning client magazine – Ampersand and long-established Bond Vigilantes blog.
 

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This is a sponsored article from M&G Investments.