APG manages the pension assets of around 4.5 million Dutch citizens.
The two firms signed a letter of intent earlier this week to seek a “long-term strategic alliance,” according to an E Fund statement.
“The cooperation between E Fund and APG will not only focus on an individual project. Instead, it will be a full and equal partnership that covers various areas,” E Fund president Sau Kwan said in an email reply to FSA.
The areas include asset and liability management from a long-term perspective, as well as investments, product development and design, vice president Gao Songfan added.
“APG is an international pension fund manager with over decades of experience. We just started to develop our pension fund management in China.
“The spectrum of pension fund investment [in China], by far, is limited to the secondary market, but it could be extended to the primary market, alternatives or other fields in future. And we could learn more about product development and design from APG since it has diverse product management experiences through managing various pension funds all over the world,” Gao added.
China’s pension fund
E Fund is one of the 18 domestic fund houses that manage the onshore mandates of China’s National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF), the state pension fund manager which runs RMB1.9trn ($287.6bn) of assets.
For offshore investments, NCSSF granted mandates to 37 investment managers, including two other mainland firms, Da Cheng Fund Management and China Universal Asset Management. E Fund, however, does not have a global mandate to manage offshore investments.
But offshore investments account for less than 6% of NCSSF’s total assets, or RMB 113.5bn, as of the end of last year.
“E Fund’s global services concentrate on institutional clients. [However], retail investors are also a big part of the market that we can’t ignore,” Kwan added.
The firm has two offshore funds listed in Europe and one offshore fund in the US.
