External money management firms oversaw 16.7% of the Bank of Korea’s $327 billion in foreign currency reserves as of Dec. 31, up from 15.8% the year before, according to the central bank’s latest annual report, released Friday.
At the end of 2010, external managers — both Korean-based managers, including sovereign wealth fund Korea Investment Corp., and foreign firms — oversaw 14.3% of the central bank’s reserves.
For the latest year, the portion of reserves managed internally by the central bank slipped to 79.4% from 79.7%, while its “liquidity tranche” dropped to 3.9% from 4.5%.
By asset class, the central bank’s allocations to equities rose 0.3 percentage points to 5.7% of its portfolio, while allocations to foreign government bonds rose 1.2 percentage points to 38%. Agency, or quasi-government, bonds saw a 1.4 percentage-point increase to 21.5%.
Allocations to asset-backed securities edged up 0.1 points to 17.1%.
Cash or time deposits, meanwhile, saw a 1.8 percentage-point drop in allocations to 4.8%, while corporate bonds dropped 1.2 percentage points to 12.9%.
For the year, the country’s reserves were up $20.6 billion, or 6.7%, from $306.4 billion at the end of 2011.
Over the past year, the central bank’s holdings of U.S. dollar-denominated assets dropped 3.2 percentage points to 57.3% of the portfolio — matching the prior year’s decline.
