Wednesday, August 31, 2016 Stamford, CT USA — After waiting years for interest rates to rise, German institutional investors are accepting that rates will be “lower for longer” and are moving to adjust their portfolio allocations in response.

Institutions of all types report plans to further reduce allocations to their traditional fixed-income dominated portfolios and increase allocations to specialist products. According to the results of the Greenwich Associates 2016 German Institutional Investors Study, institutional investors are adding specialist strategies and assets in multi-asset strategies now make up 5% of total assets for public pensions and 2% for corporates. 

As a result, institutions are turning to asset manages for advice and support.  Customization and knowledge transfer are becoming increasingly important for institutions selecting managers, who are being asked to provide value-added insight outside the bounds of traditional investment mandates. 

A handful of asset managers have seized this opportunity and these firms are working with their institutional clients to integrate specialist asset classes into their portfolios and are providing assistance in the areas of risk management and overall portfolio construction. 

“At the top of that list is Allianz Global Investors, whose success in advisory services has helped it achieve the title of 2016 Greenwich Leader in Overall German Institutional Investment Management Quality,” says Greenwich Associates Managing Director Markus Ohlig.

From January to April 2016, Greenwich Associates conducted in-depth interviews with 267 professionals at the largest institutional funds in Germany. Study participants were asked to name the asset managers they employ, and to rate the quality of those managers in a series of investment and service categories. Greenwich Quality Leaders are firms that receive client ratings topping those of competitors by a statistically significant margin