The survey identified two main positive factors for AUM growth in the shorter term.
Two of the main positive factors for AUM growth in the shorter term (to 2020) were identified as New Products and New Geographic Markets, with benefits expected to flow also from Technology. The latter likely includes investments that have been made to target new sources of AUM in the retail space more efficiently and to attract new mandates (especially from institutional investors) by offering extended quantitative and big data solutions, as identified elsewhere in the survey.
On the downside, survey respondents ranked New Entrants as the third most important negative risk to AUM growth. Interestingly, New Entrants are also cited as a strong threat to fee income growth, reflecting their agility, use of technology-based solutions and lower cost bases – given they have zero expensive legacy pension liabilities to finance and no embedded legacy IT systems.
The next most-cited negative factors were a tightly clustered trio of Trade Wars, Brexit and Changing Savings Habits – the latter reflecting falling global savings rates and the different savings habits of Millennials compared to the Baby Boomers, whose influence on savings rates is likely waning.
