Asset management is considered as a systematic process of upgrading, operating, maintaining, developing, and disposing the assets in the most cost-effective way.
The term is commonly used in the financial sector to describe people and companies that manage investments on behalf of others. These include, for example, investment managers who manage the assets of a pension fund.
By working with a group of multiple investors, asset management firms can diversify their clients’ portfolios. This gives them access to more expensive options with better capital appreciation prospects, and also reduces the associated risk.
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The information in this article is for general guidance only. It does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice, and is not a recommendation or solicitation to invest. Some facts may have changed since the time of writing.
Swiss Life Group Overview
Swiss Life Group is the largest life insurance company in Switzerland and one of Europe’s leading integrated life insurance, pension, and financial services providers with assets under management of approximately CHF 269.7 billion.
Founded in 1867 in Zurich as the cooperative Schweizerische Lebensversicherungs und Rentenanstalt, the company entered the Swiss stock market in 1997 and adopted its current name in 2002. Swiss Life is one of twenty companies listed in the Swiss Market Index (SLHN).
Swiss Life Group is a leading provider of living, retirement, and financial solutions in Europe. For over 160 years, the group has been helping private and corporate clients prepare their financial future. This is their mandate at Swiss Life: they empower people to lead independent lives.
Swiss Life provides personalized pension and financial advice to help companies and individuals identify financial risks at an early stage and take appropriate action. Through a long-term and sustainable investment, Swiss Life is able to make commitments and make and fulfill guarantee promises for several decades. They give people the opportunity to lead independent lives.
As Swiss Life Group, operation is in Switzerland, Germany, and France and they have competence centers in Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Singapore.
Swiss Life Asset Managers offers institutional and private investors access to investment and asset management solutions. In addition, Swiss Life provides multinational corporations with employee benefit solutions and high net worth individuals with structured living and retirement products.
Swiss Life Group also includes various subsidiaries. The Group has approximately 10,000 employees and a distribution network of approximately 17,000 consultants.
Swiss Life Investment Management Holding AG
The group Swiss Life has a subsidiary called Investment Management Holding AG, which is focused on making investments in different sectors, which we will discover below. The company has:
- CHF 274.4 bn in assets under management as of 30/06/2021
- CHF 98.9 bn in third-party assets under management as of 30/06/2021
- CHF 6.3 bn in net new assets for third-party investment business as of 30/09/2021
This is a renowned, ambitious, and trusted European asset manager and a leading institutional property manager in Switzerland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, and the UK.
They think long-term and act responsibly. Drawing on the knowledge and more than 160 years of risk management experience, they develop future-oriented investment solutions. This is how they support their clients in achieving their long-term investment goals. This, in turn, helps their clients plan for the long term and act with self-determination.
More than 2400 employees work for Swiss Life Asset Managers in Europe. They provide services and develop customized investment strategies for their own insurance companies as well as third-party clients such as pension funds, investment funds, asset managers, and private clients.
Let’s now review the investment options that the Swiss Life Investments can offer its clients.
Swiss Life Asset Classes
Swiss Life Asset Managers specializes in the development and management of bespoke investment solutions for institutional clients. These decisions are based on target return, acceptable risk level, and investment horizon. They include global solutions, individual asset classes, and individual investment concepts and strategies.
Real Estate
Swiss Life Asset Managers is one of the leading European real estate investors with over 125 years of property management experience.
The real estate asset class is very important to Swiss Life Asset Managers. They hold it for the benefit of the insured with them, who, thanks to their investment horizon and sustainable use of the real estate, are well suited for long-term obligations arising from their insurance business.
They also offer their third-party clients investment solutions that we have already successfully implemented on our insurance balance, thus providing them with unique access to the European real estate market. This is in the form of collective investment decisions, club deals, and joint investments. This allows them to support the clients in achieving their long-term financial goals.
Selected Real Estate Strategies
Swiss Life Asset Managers offers selected investment strategies for investments in various real estate asset classes.
European Thematic ESG Revenue and Growth Strategy
- Swiss Life Asset Managers invests in commercial real estate in locations that can attract demand through structural changes.
- When choosing a location, they consider changes in the thematic areas of destruction, climate and environment, communities and groups, consumers and lifestyles, and connectivity.
- The focus is on key European countries as well as smaller established markets (Nordic countries, Benelux, Southern Europe, Ireland, Austria).
European balanced investment strategy program
- Swiss Life Asset Managers offers clients balanced real estate investment strategies.
- They invest in European real estate in the classes of office, residential, industrial and logistics, retail and medical assets.
European Industrial and Logistics Strategy ESG
- They invest in a distribution-oriented portfolio with industrial and logistics facilities.
- The focus is on real estate investments in Germany, France, UK, Switzerland and the Benelux countries.
- By combining small industrial facilities with large logistics facilities, they achieve broad market coverage with above-average profits and below-average revenue volatility.
- The strategy has a defensive focus, which is appreciated by institutional investors in the current market conditions.
- As industrial and logistics facilities will benefit from various megatrends in the coming years, we expect significant upside potential.
Equities
The investment strategy of Swiss Life Asset Managers is focused on sustainable and attractive risk-adjusted returns that meet the long-term financial needs of their clients. The company rely on systematic selection of securities, strict risk control, operational excellence, and the integration of ESG criteria for their implementation.
To ensure sustainable and competitive performance, they pay special attention to research and development. The investment models are based on a rigorous research process that identifies and systematically exploits market inefficiencies.
Thanks to a high degree of automation, they make their processes more efficient, safer, and more precise. They actively promote in-house development of customized IT solutions – for strategic use as well as portfolio implementation and monitoring.
Because they want to be in line with their social responsibilities, they put a lot of emphasis on ESG analysis. Constantly looking for and evaluating innovative solutions, they want to further expand the competitive advantage in sustainability.
The investment process evaluates market opportunities using quantitative methods and modern IT technologies. But before the results can be included in the models, they must be economically justified.
They use a bottom-up approach to their investment process that prioritizes stock selection. When structuring portfolios, they pay special attention to the correct distribution of risks and the prevention of unwanted risks.
The portfolio managers work closely with their analysts. They focus on operational portfolio management; this includes monitoring and reviewing their effectiveness, as well as following up on analyst recommendations. The analysts, on the other hand, are engaged in long-term innovation projects and the development of IT tools. The overlapping tasks of the two teams encourage creative dialogue and improve the performance of our models.
Investment Strategies
- Diversified regional strategies that outperform others.
- Protective capital solutions to reduce drawdowns in negative market phases.
- Thematically oriented portfolios (for example, ESG).
- Professional and private investors can also invest in collective investment vehicles.
Infrastructure
Swiss Life Asset Managers is one of Europe’s leading infrastructure asset management companies. They have a long-term infrastructure investment horizon, combining deep industry knowledge and experience with reliability and sustainability.
At Swiss Life Asset Managers, they identify, acquire and actively manage investments in infrastructure assets and companies in OECD countries on behalf of clients. They strive to create diversified portfolios with a long-term horizon.
Launched in 2011, the Swiss Life Asset Managers infrastructure platform offers institutional investors efficient access to different regions and sectors within the infrastructure asset class.
Over the past 10 years, their highly skilled team has invested in infrastructure for their insurance and third-party clients, drawing on their collective infrastructure experience to achieve an excellent track record. Investors benefit from the in-depth knowledge of the sector, the strong, established global networks, and the substantial, long-term involvement of the Swiss Life Group.
offering
1. Direct unlisted portfolios of infrastructure assets
- Closed investment funds
- Individual managed accounts
- Co-investment programs
2. Unlisted multi-manager infrastructure solution
- Closed fund of funds
- Open fund of funds with liquidity characteristics
3. Active in the following sectors
- Clean energy and energy
- Utilities
- Communication
- Transport
- social infrastructure
Investment Strategies
- Core and Core+
The investment strategy of Core and Core+ is targeted at companies with the following characteristics: strong, long-term cash flows backed by real assets, high barriers to entry, significant potential for value appreciation through active management, adverse P90 capital protection scenario, high returns, focus on regulated industries, concession contracts, PPPs and PPAs, and revenues often indexed to inflation.
- Value-added
Value Added investment strategy focuses on unquoted assets and companies with the following characteristics: strong long-term cash flows backed by real assets, high barriers to entry, significant potential for value appreciation through active management, strong growth driven returns and investors benefit from capital gains, high cash returns and income often associated with inflation.
- Clean energy
Investments include assets and projects in the field of: hydropower, wind power, power grids, local and district heating networks, solar power plants, waste processing, energy recovery, other energy or energy efficiency facilities. The company currently owns several renewable energy assets in our portfolios and have a wealth of experience across all sub-sectors. They are implementing it in three different ways: a dedicated European clean energy infrastructure strategy, a dedicated Swiss clean energy infrastructure strategy, and direct investment in clean energy and renewables for our global infrastructure funds.
- Swiss Clean Energy Infrastructure
As part of their investment proposal, they have a dedicated team dedicated to direct investment in the Swiss clean energy space.
- Funds of funds
As part of the Fund of Funds strategy, the company offers access to a broadly diversified portfolio of Core, Core+ infrastructure funds, and complementary infrastructure funds across Europe and North America in key infrastructure sectors. They prefer to invest with highly qualified, reliable external investment managers who demonstrate a strong and successful track record. They also use their extensive private equity experience to find attractive co-investment opportunities within the strategy.
Responsible Investment
For Swiss Life Asset Managers, responsible investing is the solid foundation on which they build the business and, last but not least, an important element of their fiduciary responsibilities.
- ESG integration and climate change
Managing risks and opportunities sustainably across cycles is deeply rooted in theur corporate DNA.
They have developed Swiss Life Asset Managers’ investment strategy with a long-term and sustainable outlook that is in complete synergy with our insurance commitments. In addition to integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) aspects into all core activities, they are undertaking various initiatives that go beyond standard integration.
As an asset manager committed to the fiduciary duty, responsible investing is not only a means of redirecting capital flows towards sustainable development but also an important tool for seizing investment opportunities and reducing the associated risks for their investors. They believe that smart, sustainable investment decisions prove effective in managing risk and delivering more sustainable returns precisely because they support and fund companies that benefit society and shareholders.
- ESG in Securities
Swiss Life has launched a program of “green” investments in the field of securities. Our goal is to increase investment in green bonds to CHF 2 billion by the end of 2023, in line with the ICMA Green Bond Principles. They have also formalized a strategy to phase out thermal coal for the bond portfolio, facilitating the transition to a more resilient and low-carbon economy and avoiding asset default risk. Over the past year, they have reduced our exposure to companies that derive 10% or more of their revenue from thermal coal (either from mining or by selling it to external parties) to 0%.
- ESG in Real estate
As Swiss Life place a strong focus on sustainability, one of their top priorities is to improve the energy efficiency of their extensive real estate portfolio. Swiss Life Asset Managers is committed to acquiring assets that already have strong on-site energy efficiency and renewable energy production. They are also actively refining less performing new acquisitions or permanent portfolio assets. A key component of their climate strategy is the monitoring of an extensive set of indicators. They closely monitor the energy consumption and carbon emissions of their real estate portfolio in line with TCFD guidelines.
- ESG in Infrastructure
Swiss Life pays special attention to the opportunities for transition to low-carbon technologies in our infrastructure activities. This approach is particularly evident with their recent acquisition of Fontavis, an infrastructure investment company specializing in clean energy. As the fight against climate change continues to make fundamental changes to business models in all sectors, as well as society at large, the transition to a low-carbon economy creates great opportunities for infrastructure assets. For them, areas such as renewable energy, clean technology, and logistics represent key areas of opportunity.
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