Ossiam: Neuheiten und guter Ausblick für 2014

**Der französische ETF-Anbieter Ossiam möchte sich als Marktführer von „smart beta"-Produkten etablieren. Ossiam stellt den ETF-Bereich der Muttergesellschaft Natixis Global Asset Management dar und kam 2011 auf den Markt. „finanzwelt" sprach exklusiv mit **Isabelle Bourcier, Head of Business Development bei Ossiam.

finanzwelt: Easy, reasonable and transparent – even consumer-advocates are recommending Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). But so far, they don´t play an important role for private investors´portfolios. What´s your look on the market? Will the relevance of ETFs for private investors increase?

Bourcier: The evolution of financial markets in most European countries in the past years, added to the fact that regulation is still quite tolerant to inducements and as such does not favor non-inducement based products, these do not help private investment in ETFs, although they are perfect products for educated individual investors.

For example smart beta ETFs such as minimum variance, with embedded risk management features, are designed for long term holding periods and particularly suited for individual investors.

In light of the US "ETF revolution" that occurred in the past 10 years we expect this situation to change. Regulators, at both EC and country levels, are rightfully pushing for more transparency. UK and the Netherlands are already moving in that direction.

ETFs progressively help professionals such as financial advisors and private banks to better service their retail clients. These professional investors, alongside ETFs sponsors such as Ossiam are therefore playing a big role in retail investors education.

finanzwelt: The European market for ETFs declined in the second quarter of this year according to the analysts of Lipper. What is your explanation for that?

Bourcier: Even though the year to date snapshot is more favorable due to a good third quarter, it is true that the European ETF market lags the US ETF market in terms of growth. We see two main reasons. First, and this was Ossiam's initial statement when entering the market, the European market developed for too long solely on vanilla ETFs, with all players launching me-too products, hence some overcrowding on classical indices. On the contrary, the US market has seen more sustainable long term growth due to its focus on innovation. Second, distribution modes are evolving in Europe, but not fast enough. The European market still favors retrocessions, this ultimately is a drag to the growth of the ETF market.

finanzwelt: Will the number of new ETFs increase? In which sectors do you identify chances?

Bourcier: There will be a growing number of new ETFs to better suit a more diversified investor population. Traditional markets are already very well covered, so Ossiam expects innovative products to be leading new trends.

The field of smart beta where Ossiam has a unique position is expected to grow the fastest. Ossiam believes in specialization in that area in order to provide new capabilities that better fit investors' risk/return profiles.

finanzwelt: What is the specific position of Ossiam among all ETF-companies? Concerning to that, what´s the role of the German market?

Bourcier: Ossiam has a very specific positioning, targeting innovation in the ETF space. We are the first European ETF player focused solely on specialty ETF. This is reflected in the organizational structure of the firm, with large research teams providing support to our clients through preliminary research for product design, research papers and quantitative studies. Our current product range consists in various smart beta ETF on equity and commodity indices, all of which bring significant added value to investors through enhanced risk management.

The German market has since inception been one of the key markets for Ossiam, with significant inflows coming from all types of institutional clients. We see strong appetite for our products in Germany, and strong education on the clients side to quantitative investment pro-cesses.

finanzwelt: At Ossiam, worldwide you were the first issuing a commodity-ETF with a special risk weighting. Could you please explain that concept in more details?

Bourcier: This new ETF, named Ossiam Risk Weighted Enhanced Commodity ex. Grains TR UCITS ETF 1C (EUR) - xetra: OSXC, provides investors with a systematic long-only exposure to a diversified basket of futures commodities contracts (excluding grains), with reduced volatility. The index weights constituents based on their price volatility over the past year. This ensures sound risk budgeting by allocating more weight to commodities futures contracts with the lowest volatility. The main impact of this is more efficient risk allocation in a global portfolio with for example reduce weighting of crude oil to less than 10 per cent whereas this commodity weights 47 per cent within the S&P GSCI index.

A second feature of the ETF is its use of an "enhanced roll"mechanism which seeks to minimise adverse changes in commodities futures curves when it rebalances once a month. Returns from many other passive strategies have suffered badly when commodity futures curves are in contango (upward sloping) as they have been forced to sell low/buy high during periods of rebalancing.

finanzwelt: Which expectations do you have for the upcoming year (in particular inflows, positioning in the market)?

Bourcier: We are on track to at least double our assets under management this year. We are very confident that by leveraging on existing products, and on new product launches, we will keep on gathering very significant inflows in the years to come. Product wise, the strategy is to expand our smart beta capabilities to other asset classes, like fixed income.

Das Interview führte Alexander Heftrich