SWIP boosts institutional sales by 22% over 2006

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) has seen significant growth in its UK institutional business winning a record £1.3bn gross new business over 2006, a rise of 22% on the previous year’s figures. This success further strengthens SWIP’s presence as one of the leading institutional managers in the UK, overseeing a total of £26.5bn in institutional assets under management.

SWIP’s success can be attributed to its highly skilled investment teams and bottom-up driven research process. SWIP has secured a number of high profile institutional mandate wins across a diverse range of asset classes. Its expertise in managing UK equities was endorsed by Northern Trust, one of the leading manager of managers in the UK, who awarded the asset manager a £165m high alpha UK equity mandate at the end of last year. SWIP has witnessed significant inflows into its UK equity strategies and has benefited from UK institutional investors seeking to enhance their returns from their actively managed assets.

Simon Wombwell, Head of Distribution at SWIP commented: “SWIP’s expertise in managing institutional assets is well established and this is being recognised in the new business success we have achieved over the last year. Our new business momentum continues as we progress through 2007 and we expect to see inflows in the region of £700m for the first half of the year.

We have notched up a string of institutional new business wins not only in UK equities but across a number of asset classes which is testimony to SWIP’s quality of people, robust investment process and proven track record in delivering results for our clients. We are product innovators at SWIP and looking ahead, 2007 will continue to be an exciting year for us as we focus on developing our institutional product range.”

SWIP’s international business is also developing with great success. SWIP has well established clients in Scandinavia including Tapiola Asset Management Company, part of the Finnish Tapiola finance services group, who has recognised SWIP’s expertise in managing real estate investment securities. AMF, one of Sweden’s leading pension providers, appointed SWIP in September of last year to manage a €17m European small-cap equities mandate.

SWIP has also seen some recent success winning business from new clients in Southern Europe for Emerging Market equities and European real estate securities and has secured two new clients in Germany for its European property portfolio. SWIP launched its emerging market equity fund specifically to target pension funds in the US in October last year and has already won its first two US clients.