Amundi, a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole and Société Générale, plans to double its assets under management (AUM) in exchange-traded funds (ETF) and indexing business over the next three years to reach $100bn.

"Our ambition is to double our assets under management in the next three years," said Yves Perrier, chief executive of Amundi, at a media briefing. "Our ETF and indexing business has demonstrated dynamic growth, having attracted net flows of some $6bn since the beginning of the year."

The French asset manager will continue relying on its capacity to innovate in order to build solutions tailored to clients' needs as well as its aggressive pricing, Valerie Baudson, global head of ETF and indexing at Amundi, told SRP.

Baudson emphasised the recent development of solutions based on smart beta, socially responsible investing (SRI) and low carbon management to highlight the firm's capacity to offer innovative and sought-after investments to investors.

Amundi Group had $1.1tr of AUM as of June 30 this year, which makes it the number ten global asset manager and number one in Europe. It is the number five European ETF provider with $18bn of AUM as of August 31, 2014.

According to Laurent Guillet, Amundi's chief in London, the size of assets gives Amundi the ability to enjoy high economy of scales and bargaining power, which puts it in a strong position to offer competitive pricing.

Synthetic/leverage
Baudson told SRP that Amundi's current offer is focused on both synthetic and physical ETFs because institutional investors are deploying both types of strategy in their portfolios.

"All our ETFs offer a high level of transparency – including collateral and counterparty information," she said. "We also offer daily liquidity as we target liquid underlyings for our products."

However, said Baudson, ETFs with short and leverage strategies, which are popular among retail investors, will not be offered by Amundi as the focus to reach its ambitious objective of doubling the AUM will be on institutional investors.

Baudson also said that Amundi does not rule out the possibility of acquiring a new business to facilitate reaching this target and that it will primarily focus on Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

According to SRP data, so far this year Amundi has been involved in the launch and/or distribution of 27 structured products in France. Amundi also has 30 live structures in Italy and seven in Japan.

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