Old Mutual targets growth for Skandia

The new owner of Skandia, South African financial services firm Old Mutual, has identified growth as one of the major goals it hopes the platform provider’s Australian operation will achieve over the next three years.

“We like what we see of Skandia Australia. We want it to grow and we want to invest in it. We think it occupies a sweet spot within the platform space because of its independence from tied distributors and tied fund managers,” Old Mutual chief executive Hasan Askari said.

In terms of a growth target, Old Mutual feels it is reasonable to expect the domestic operation to double its size in the next triennium.

“Skandia Australia’s funds under administration is $4.5 billion at the moment, and I would be very disappointed if we’re not between $9 [billion] to $10 billion by sometime in 2009,” Askari said.

He said the most likely way this expansion would be achieved is through concentrating on Skandia’s existing strengths.

“We’ll grow by stressing our independence; we’ll grow by stressing our nimbleness relative to the bigger competitors; and we’ll grow by getting our investment research to be even more defined. It’s all part of just improving the productivity and the profile of the organisation,” Askari explained.

From Skandia Australia’s point of view, they will be looking to study the technology employed by Old Mutual’s platform provider Selestia, which has been very successful overseas, in order to apply some of those practices to its own operation.