Many of the firm’s equity-heavy strategies delivered a gross return (before fees) of “well over 10%”, according to the firm’s statement.
It is not known what the firm meant by “well over”. However, even simple investment strategies benefitted during the same time period. A passive index fund tracking the MSCI AC World Index, for example, would have returned 11.8%, according to FE.
“We see ourselves as more of a risk manager than a pure performance manager,” explained Christian Nolting, global CIO and head of wealth discretionary business, in a statement. “This is a key part of our well-established investment process.”
Close to 90% of Deutsche’s bond strategies outperformed their benchmarks in the first half of the year, noted the firm in the statement, adding that in other categories, such as “cautious” and “unconstrained”, the percentage of outperforming strategies was “even higher”. No figures were provided.
The firm’s unconstrained strategies for client portfolios have returned above 8% since inception in 2015, Nolting said. However, the 8% figure will be lower for the investor because it is gross of fees.
By comparison, a low fee index fund tracking the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index would have delivered a 7.02% return in US dollar terms since 1 July 2015, according to FE.
Globally, the AUM of the Deutsche’s wealth management division was €304bn ($332bn) on 31 March 2017. Around 16% of that is managed within discretionary strategies, according to Tuan Huynh, CIO and head of wealth discretionary for Apac at Deutsche Bank Wealth Management.
Bond strategies account for approximately 50% of the discretionary business, while equity and unconstrained categories make up around 25% each, noted Huynh in an email to FSA.
Asia accounts for “low single digits” of the bank’s discretionary wealth management business, he added.
The region’s financial hubs in Hong Kong and Singapore account for less than 2% of the bank’s approximately 20,000 discretionary client accounts globally.
