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People Moves Roundup

Schroders gets a new head of private assets, Quoniam gets a new CEO, and more.
By Chris Butera

Schroders Hires Senior Private Assets Distribution Head

Schroders has hired Peter Arnold as senior private assets distribution head to drive the firm’s sales effort in this asset class.

Arnold will lead Schroders’ Alternative Sales Unit, which was established last year and focuses on the distribution of Schroders’ private assets investment offering.

He will report to John Troiano, Schroders’ global head of distribution, and Georg Wunderlin, Schroders new global head of private assets, who joined the firm earlier this month.

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Arnold was most recently the global head of international fund distribution at Citi, specializing in private debt, real estate, and global infrastructure, where he was responsible for the origination and distribution of third-party private assets products to institutional investors globally. He will join Schroders in early June.

Prior to his 18 years at Citi, Arnold worked at JP Morgan, UBS, and Societe Generale.

CEO and Co-founder Helmut Paulus Leaves Quoniam for Personal Reasons

Managing Partner and CEO Helmut Paulus has decided to leave Quoniam Asset Management for personal reasons after more than 20 years of service.

Paulus is one of the co-founders of the company. In his time as CEO, he helped increase assets under management to more than $33 billion by gaining the trust of institutional investors and by facilitating the stable and successful growth of the organization into a partner-run business that now employs 130 people at its offices in Frankfurt and London.

Paulus’ last day is June 30. Nikolaus Sillem will become the new CEO. Sillem served for many years as a member of the company’s supervisory board, stepping down in March 2019, and headed up Union Investment’s institutional business.

Quoniam will continue to operate as a partner-run quantitative asset manager with a focus on major institutional investors in Germany and abroad.

Insight Investment Names Jennifer Babsin Head of North American Marketing

Insight Investment announced that Jennifer Babsin has joined the company as head of marketing, North America. Babsin will lead all North American marketing programs as Insight continues to leverage its liability driven investment (LDI), fixed income, and multi-asset capabilities.

“Jennifer is a skilled industry veteran with an impressive track record of developing and executing campaigns that help institutional and intermediary clients make well-informed decisions.,” said Jack Boyce, head of distribution for North America.

Babsin most recently held the role of head of US marketing and communications, and global strategic marketing director at Man Group, where she guided firm-wide marketing strategy and activity.

Cohen & Steers Appoints New Chief Marketing Officer

Paul Zettl has joined Cohen & Steers as senior vice president, head of global marketing and chief marketing officer. Bringing more than 25 years of financial services experience, Zettl will lead strategic marketing initiatives for all client channels and platforms worldwide.

“Paul’s experience in building global investment brands will be crucial in extending the firm’s position as a leading manager of listed real assets and alternative income,” said Todd Glickson, executive vice president, head of marketing, product and corporate strategy.

 Zettl comes to Cohen & Steers from T. Rowe Price, where he most recently served as group vice president, head of product marketing and offer management. In this role, he oversaw product marketing and offer management for the US intermediary business.

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Home > News > Research > Money Managers’ Own Plans Have Higher Balances, More Choices
Research

Money Managers’ Own Plans Have Higher Balances, More Choices

Asset manager 401(k) plan balances are four times that of the general population.

By Michael Katz

How well do the companies that manage the investments of 401(k) plans steward the retirement plans for their own employees? Consulting firm Callan analyzed the characteristics of 401(k) plans sponsored by 157 asset managers representing over $200 billion in plan assets, and compared that dataset to a broader population of 55,000 plans.

“Their employees are investment professionals and presumably more engaged (and potentially vocal) about the design of their plans,” Greg Allen, CEO of Callan, said in a release.  “They are also faced with the interesting question of employing products managed by their competitors, or in some cases, employing their own products. Ultimately, we were interested to see how these factors affected plan design and whether it resulted in meaningful differences from the broader population.”

Callan’s analysis revealed that asset manager plans are distinctive in some key areas, such having significantly higher average balances—four times higher than those in the broad universe of defined contribution plans—as well as higher employee and employer contributions. Asset managers also offered, on average, a significantly higher number of investment choices than current industry practice, and their plans tended to be more complex than the plans of the broader population.

Asset manager plans also used far fewer target date funds than the broad population, with nearly one-third (30%) of the plans in the dataset not even offering them.  At the same time, active management was used more frequently in manager plans than in a broad universe. However, the study found that the managers in the dataset used Vanguard more than any other asset manager, which suggests that they haven’t ruled out offering passive management strategies.

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“Overall, the investment management industry scored high marks on the two most important retirement savings success metrics: high contribution rates and in turn high average balances,” said the report. “Generous matching policies, profit-sharing, high salaries, and long employee tenure all contributed to these successful outcomes.”

However, the study found that results were more mixed when evaluating plan design compared with industry best practices. The report found that in contrast to the current industry consensus, asset managers generally embraced complexity over simplicity in their investment designs. They also had relatively high usage of brokerage windows.

The report said that the prevailing philosophy for the industry seems to be that its participants are sophisticated investors and should be given a broad universe of choices.

“While this philosophy may be the right one for portfolio managers and other highly compensated investment professionals, it is not clear from a fiduciary standpoint that it should be extended to the broad population of DC plan participants,” said the report.

Callan also said that most large defined contribution plans have moved away from the unsupervised “mutual fund supermarket” model, and toward a streamlined, highly supervised approach in which every option has a specific purpose.

“It will be interesting to see whether the increasing litigation pressure being exerted on investment management-sponsored 401(k) plans will cause them to migrate in a similar direction,” said the report.

Related Stories:

Lawsuit Alleges 401(k) Provider Violated ERISA for Self Gain

Defined Contribution Plan Balances Tumble 10% in Q4

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