“Growing internationally is something we are looking to do. The bulk of our assets have historically been in the UK – the UK is a real stronghold for us,” says Phil Reid, head of sales at Royal London Asset Management (RLAM).
“These strategies we offer, which we believe do have an edge, can be leveraged into international markets.”
Reid, who was promoted to the sales head role in October from head of wholesale, is discussing RLAM’s ambitious future growth plans – specifically, to become a leading, global, active asset management firm.
RLAM has enjoyed strong levels of growth over the years, having increased its assets under management from £84bn when Reid first joined the firm in 2016, to more than £170bn at time of writing (November 2024). However, he says a majority of this growth has been borne from UK operations.
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“Royal London has enjoyed a great growth journey in the UK, and we have capabilities which I think will resonate with international markets. We are looking to expand in a focused way, as opposed to expanding for the sake of it,” he explains.
“We will perhaps look to five or so key markets in a very deliberate way, in order to build a presence where we believe there will be strong demand for our products.
“We have already built out the team to some degree. We have somebody in Germany, for example, and somebody in Switzerland, so there is more to see here. That is probably all I can say right now, but it will be built in a similar way to how we built our UK proposition – adding to what we do, in a thoughtful way, over the years.”
During Reid’s eight years at RLAM, he has seen the company gradually build out its offerings. However, he stresses this has been carried out “selectively” and only if the business feels it can offer an edge within particular market areas relative to its competitors.
“This is a very exciting story to be a part of. While Royal London was previously very much known as a fixed-income house, it is now known for other asset classes additionally. But I think we have done this in an intelligent way, so hopefully clients would agree we have added capabilities which offer value for them.”
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The latest expansion of RLAM’s capabilities has been the hiring of Aviva Investors’ global equities duo Francois de Bruin and Matt Kirby. As of November 2024, Saldanha has been named lead manager of the Royal London Global Equity Income fund and a manager on the Global Equity Select fund, which De Bruin will head.
Meanwhile, Kirby will co-manage the Global Equity Income and Global Equity Diversified funds.
“In terms of the global equity team, we have a really strong process in the lifecycle approach we use,” Reid says. “I think the hiring of Richard, Matt and Francois is great. I am excited to see what the future looks like for the team from here.”
Read the rest of this article in the December issue of Portfolio Adviser magazine
