The Italian Asset Management market from an Asset Servicer’s perspective

Sammanfattning: The asset management industry constitutes a vital part of the economy thanks to its financing role. The sector has profoundly changed since its establishment and, nowadays, changes in organization, investors’ behaviour and regulatory framework are deeply reshaping the industry. In this context, also the Italian market, which has traditionally been characterised by some distinguishing features, is being influenced by a series of modifications at both European and national level. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Italian Asset Management industry’s structure and organisation, understand how it is evolving and grasp the factors that can affect its market to then draw implications influencing the business and operations of an asset servicer. This work divides the Italian Asset Management market into two parts, the Asset Managers segment, including collective management and discretionary mandates, and the Pension Schemes segment. These two composing parts are analysed from an Asset Servicer’s perspective, presenting data over the financial instruments they contain. The paper follows the Case Study approach employing mainly secondary quantitative data. In Italy, the distribution of Asset Management products as well as trading activities remain based on banking networks. In recent years, among collective management products, foreign-law mutual funds are the ones that grew the most. This, along with the fact that the asset servicers’ market is dominate by few specialized players operating on a global scale, puts the spotlight on asset servicers’ cross-border level of integration. Even tough discretionary mandates are struggling to recover and have grown at a slower pace, due to “MiFID II” upcoming rules, financial intermediaries will be encouraged to place these products on the market. Lastly, the Italian pension system is underdeveloped if compared to other European countries and few players own the majority of the complementary pension schemes market. The paper highlights how technology innovations, policies of the ruling governments, interest rates levels and national and communitarian regulation are the factors driving the asset management industry.