Skandia acquisition set to drive down fees

Ross Laidlaw

Skandia intends to use its acquisition of Intech as a way of driving down fund manager costs on its platform by utilising the mandated structure of the Intech Investment Trusts.

According to Skandia chief executive Ross Laidlaw, this mandated structure is an efficient way of delivering asset management to the retail market.

“By putting the asset management capabilities into a mandated structure we will be looking to continue to drive down the cost of our fund managers and, therefore, continue to remain very competitive in the retail market,” he said.

“With further consolidation likely to occur in the industry and also with increased pricing pressure, this places us very well to continue to bring out strong asset management capabilities, but in a very cost effective way.”

As a result of the acquisition, Laidlaw said Intech would now become a division of Skandia but would continue to retain its own brand, as this was important to its existing clients.

However, he added that over time the engine room where the multi-manager funds were constructed would begin to look the same for Skandia’s platform, Intech’s institutional clients and any third party platforms.

“The combined research centre will continue to look at new innovative products and they will be placed on the Skandia platform and also through Intech’s current distribution,” Laidlaw said.

“Skandia and Intech don’t own any asset managers, so we will continue to be objective and independent in our selection of asset managers, so our philosophy is united in that we are both selecting the best of breed fund managers to provide good investment performance to our investors and to our clients.”