Money managers based in Singapore ended 2015 with a roughly 9% gain in client assets from the year before, off sharply from the prior year's 30% surge, said an annual report Wednesday by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
However, in a difficult market environment that saw traditional managers' assets under management edge up 4% for the year, real estate and private equity managers bucked the trend, with gains of 80% and 47%, respectively, the central bank's survey of the country's 628 registered and licensed fund managers showed.
Citing a recent Boston Consulting Group report on the global asset management industry, MAS noted that AUM for money managers globally ended 2015 at $71.4 trillion, a 1% gain that was off sharply from the prior year's advance of 8%.
Asia, excluding Japan and Australia, remained a relative bright spot, however, logging a 10% gain to $5.2 trillion, the report noted.
The 9% gain for managers based in Singapore, meanwhile, lifted the industry's AUM to S$2.6 trillion ($1.8 trillion). The industry's compounded annual growth for the five years through 2015 came to 14%.
Net inflows roughly halved for the latest year to S$203 billion, accounting for almost the entire S$207 billion rise in industry AUM.
However, inflows for managers of alternatives strategies came to more than 40% of the year's net inflows, up from less than 12% of the prior year's total.
Among alternative managers, real estate managers saw the biggest surge in AUM, up 80% from the year before to S$69 billion. Private equity and venture capital firms saw their combined AUM jump 47% to S$136 billion.
Hedge fund managers, meanwhile, ended the year with combined AUM of S$119 billion, up 11%, and managers of real estate investment trusts saw a 7% rise to S$85 billion.
The MAS survey showed 80% of the industry's AUM coming from clients based outside of Singapore, while 68% of the total was invested in the Asia-Pacific region.
