Allfunds wins key client business in nordics and plans new office in region

Allfunds, the largest fund distribution platform in Europe, has expanded their business in the Nordic markets helping to further drive growth plans across the region.

The expansion comes off the back of several new client agreements and plans to open a local office in the Nordic region. During the last three years, Allfunds has been working to consolidate their service model in the region, a business model that consists of a local approach whilst leveraging their global capabilities.

The strategic aim for the region is to become the preferred investment infrastructure and technology provider across the wealth management industry, supporting the activity of their core segments (banks, insurance companies, wealth managers, and pension funds) with a fully integrated fund platform solution. This includes, amongst others, an automated and cost-efficient access to, and custody of, more than 53,000 third party investment funds from over 569 fund management companies through a single distribution agreement with Allfunds. In addition, Allfunds also offers quantitative fund screening and reporting tools, as well as in-depth support from one of the largest fund research teams of any financial institution in Europe.

Allfunds’ activity in the region during the last months has been very intensive, with several significant clients signing agreements with the Bank. Nordic domestic players have welcomed Allfunds’ arrival to the region, with new commitments from premium brand groups such as DNB and Sparebank 1 Alliance in Norway, OP Financial Group and Ålandsbanken in Finland, LHV in Estonia, Saxo Bank in Denmark, and Íslandsbanki, Icelandic Securities, pension funds Festa lífeyrissjóður and Stapi lífeyrissjóður in Iceland.

According to Allfunds Regional Manager for Northern Europe, Stig Harby: “We are impressed with the warm welcome across the Nordic region, where there are no similar platforms with such a broad service offering, combining operational, informative and investment services and solutions, all in one single access point. We see a clear opportunity to serve our Nordic clients with solutions also on the regulatory front, as the case may be for Mifid II, PRIIPS and Solvency II where we have the required information in-house. This opportunity is definitely important”.

As a consequence of the strong interest from financial distributors in the Nordic region, Allfunds plans to open a local representative office in the region in order to be even closer to their institutional partners. The representative office should be active during first half of 2018, reinforcing Allfunds local commitment to the Nordic markets. This office will be the tenth for Allfunds with offices already in Luxembourg, Zurich, London, Madrid, Milan, Dubai, Singapore, Santiago de Chile, and Bogota.

Juan Alcaraz, Allfunds’ CEO, commented: “Excellent client servicing requires local understanding of distributors’ needs and continuous interaction with domestic market players. It is in our DNA to become the preferred local-global partner for wealth management solutions and we see no other platform in the region with the same holistic and powerful service proposition”.