St George tops retail growth tables

St George Bank was the hottest retail fund manager in 2004, growing its funds under management faster than any other competitor in the retail market.

According to fresh Plan for Life figures, St George grew assets by 25.2 per cent, while Perpetual and Colonial First State (CFS), the second and third fastest growers, increased their coffers by 20.6 per cent and 20 per cent respectively.

Calendar year 2004 was good for retail managed funds overall with total funds under management up 17.9 per cent.

CFS’s growth, which has been attributed to growth in its platform business and comes despite large outflows from its retail funds management products, helped the Commonwealth Bank subsidiary hold its place as the biggest retail fund manager in Australia with 14.1 per cent of the market. CFS is closely followed by National Australia/MLC with 12.8 per cent and AMP with 10.8 per cent. Thanks to its stellar growth, St George sits as the eighth largest retail fund manager behind AXA, Macquarie, BT and ING.

Of the St George results, Kate Mulligan, managing director of the bank’s funds management subsidiary Advance, said: "These strong results are indicative of the combined strengths of the Asgard platform and Advance funds management businesses. We believe that our focus on superior administrative service to advisers combined with our product offering has provided strong inflows into both businesses, helping produce this result."

As reported earlier this week in the Assirt market share report, CFS is also the biggest fund manager in Australia when all funds - wholesale and retail - are brought into the equation - but is being closely followed by Macquarie which experienced phenomenal funds growth in its wholesale listed investment vehicles in 2004.

CFS head of investment management John Pearce said that the latest Plan for Life figures were further proof that recent outflows from its in-house managed funds have been more than compensated by healthy inflows into its platform business.

In the superannuation and rollovers space, St George again achieved the highest growth over calendar 2004, along with NAB/MLC. Macquarie on the other hand recorded a significant fall in its gross inflows of 16 per cent.

In the unit trust and investment retail funds market CFS, Macquarie, ING, AXA and St George experienced the highest growth rates while in the cash trusts market Perpetual, UBS and ING achieved the highest growth.